Text:   Luke 13:1-9

ANOTHER CHANCE

Along with all the other students riding the hay wagon one evening at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event, the teenaged girl was having a great time.  As often happens with young folks, the fun got somewhat animated.  Kids started playfully pushing, and dodging each other on the hay wagon...and that’s when it happened.  This young woman jumped off, stumbled, and suddenly shrieked as she found herself pinned beneath the wheels of the hay wagon.  Somebody had a cell phone; the rescue squad was called in the hope that they might somehow extract her, but by the time they arrived, her life had ebbed away.   The next day, I was asked to come to this small rural high school, to be available in the cafeteria to provide grief counseling for the other students.   In a school of this size, everyone knows everyone else, so this heartbreaking misfortune had struck everyone.  Of course, some of the students who’d been on the hay wagon the night before were so traumatized that they didn’t even make it to school that day.   Most of the other students who did make it to school were simply not able or willing to talk about it.  They just went through their school day as they usually would’ve.  But there were a handful of students who did take some time to talk with me about it.  And among these, I noticed a pattern.  Each of them had lost someone dear to them within the past year.  The grief they were feeling over the loss of their classmate was all wrapped up with the feelings they still hadn’t quite worked through regarding the recent loss of a parent, or of a grandparent, or in one case, a brother.   The burden of their grief over those previous losses, it seemed, combined with or stirred up the grief of this loss, to the point where they found they had to confront what they were feeling about their classmate—even though those feelings were very painful.  A few of the kids who went through this horrible tragedy were internally driven to face the reality of what’d happened, in a way that most others weren’t.  

A lot of the time, we tend to go through life with the sense that everything’s going to be okay…that nothing bad will happen, to us, or to those we care about.   We hear about devastating events like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, but somehow it doesn’t seem very real to us.  Our minds do this little trick, where we dismiss what’s happened to those other folks as something that doesn’t concern us…we imagine it as something that “couldn’t happen here.”  Or maybe we rationalize that, even if something bad does happen here, we in this country have the resources and the infra-structure to cope with it, so ultimately, everything will be okay.  After all, it’s not like we’re a third-world country, right?  It’s not like we have a government that’s so corrupt or ineffective that basic disaster services that aren’t even developed.  And so when calamity strikes, and the news is filled with all these horrible images and death and casualty figures, we just go through our day as usual.   Of course, not all of us can do this.   Some of us have had our own calamities; these fresh tragedies that happen to other people stir up our own terrible experiences that we’ve buried inside but that are still not too deep below the surface.  Those for whom this is true have to at least pause for a little bit, to process what’s happened to somebody else.  Some of us might even feel compelled to try to come to terms with it on some level--to try to explain what’s happened.  After all, if we can explain it the right way, maybe we won’t have to think much more about it.   

Perhaps looking for an explanation, in our gospel today, some people come to Jesus and they inquire about a terrible tragic event that was current news—how the Roman governor had slain some Galileans while they were worshipping at the temple.   Jesus response?  Does he give them an easy explanation?  “Yeah, for something like that to’ve happened to them, those people must’ve been really wicked folks.”  Or, does he comfort them by telling them, “Chill out!  It’s okay, you’re safe!  Don’t worry…this kind of stuff can’t happen to you.”  Nope.  The Lord confronts the conventional explanation for dealing with such things—and he does so in a rather surprising way.   There was a prevailing attitude in Jesus’ society that, if something bad happened to someone, they had brought God’s judgment down upon themselves, on account of some great sin.  Jesus flat out denies that this was the case—both in the situation with the Galileans, and in another recent event he brings up, where a tower had collapsed, killing 18 people.  “No,” Jesus states, “these people didn’t suffer because they were worse than anyone else.”    But he then goes on to essentially tell them, None of us you are safe…On account of your sin, you all face the judgment of an empty, meaningless death.  And Jesus seems not only to imply that the inquirers should meet this harsh reality head-on, but he directs them to how that reality should lead them to respond:  “Unless you repent,” he tells them, “you will all simply perish, as they did.”  

Jesus used this opportunity to speak a prophetic word of warning –a word that could well be addressed to us too.  For now, the Lord appears to be saying, we’ve all been granted the gift of time; how much time, we don’t know.   Jesus has a valid point.  We may live under the illusion that we have years or even decades to hang out here on the planet.  But the reality is that all of our lives hang by a thread.  We may not like to think about it, but we are fragile, and the world is a dangerous place.  At the very least, life as we know it is vulnerable.  Just ask someone who survived Hurricane Katrina, right?  Or someone who lived in New York City on September 11, 2001.  Or anyone who’s battled cancer, or suffered a heart attack, or lived through an assault or a serious car wreck.  Every day, people do manage to survive all kinds of awful things that can happen.    But, as many who have made it through things like this can tell you, life is seldom the same again.  

Wow.   This is a pretty depressing line of thought.   As a preacher, I got to live with it all week, and it’s not a reflection I would’ve chosen to pursue; it’s what the Lord Jesus’ words in our gospel for today have led to.  But there is a point to it.  “Unless you repent,” Jesus says, “you will all perish as they did.”   Now, Jesus isn’t making some kind of simplistic correlation between our moral choices and the bad things that happen to us, as some might suggest.  How do we know? Because to express the complexity of what he’s saying, he follows this discussion with a parable—a parable of a landowner who orders a tree chopped down, on account of it’s failed to bear fruit--for three years.  The parable also includes a gardener who intercedes for the tree, asking to give it another year so that it can be nurtured, in the hope that it will yet bear some fruit.    As I read it, the bottom line from this gospel reading seems to be this:  We really all need to face the harsh reality that we are mortal.  And facing our mortality should lead us to embrace a new approach to life.  Our remaining time here is a gift—a gift that has limits.  And it’s a gift that, while we have it, is intended to produce certain results.

The nature of those intended results—well that’s pretty much what the rest of the New Testament is all about.  For the people of the early Christian church, the new life they were called to in Christ was about turning from self-interest and self-righteousness to live together, as the start of a new thing God was doing in his creation.  It was about living out Christ’s call to forgive as they’d been forgiven, to love as they’d been loved, as a way of bearing  witness to God’s great love for all in Christ.  It was about caring for poor people and embracing marginalized people.  It was about doing away with the distinctions and barriers that society had established, and relating to one another as equals under God.  It was about serving those in need and a willingness to suffer for the sake of righteousness.  And for the early Christians, this new life came about as they lived together in Christ-centered community.   In the book of Acts, it describes how they broke bread together in homes, and they devoted themselves, it says, to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to sharing the sacrament, and to prayer.  They willingly shared their resources so that no one among them would go without.   And, through this shared approach to life, an active, vibrant and fruitful faith grew, in and among them.

What about us? What might our lives look like if we were to turn from the emptiness of short fruitless lives, to embrace a whole new life in Christ?  What if we were to take to heart our Lord’s inference that the time we have remaining on this earth is a gift—and that it’s intended to give us a chance—a chance to produce good fruit?  I have an idea that certain things would come more clearly into focus for us…while some other things would probably become a lot less important.  

For one thing, we might avail ourselves to as much “fertilizer” as we can get.  The gardener in Jesus parable says of the fruitless tree, “Let it alone for another year, so I can put manure on it.”  In ancient agriculture, just as it is for modern organic farmers, manure was the main form of fertilizer.  If you wanted to produce a good yield, you dug around a plant to loosen the soil a bit, and then and you spread some manure at its base.   For us to get “fertilized,” we need to be exposed to those things that will help our faith to become more active and fruitful.   Most if not all of our small groups at Rejoice have a strong fertilizing component…as do all of our worship experiences, including both Sunday morning and seasonal mid-week services.  Yep, that’s right…just think of me as a manure shoveler.   And think of every worship opportunity at Rejoice as a chance to get another good dressing of manure.  

The Lord Jesus’ parable spoke of a fig tree…fig trees were known to produce fruit only every three years.  This particular tree in Jesus illustration though, hadn’t born any fruit for three years; that’s why the owner wants it chopped down…it’s obviously a bogus tree that’s taking up space in his garden.   But the gardener in the story is hopeful that, with just another year of cultivation combined with fertilization, the tree might yet bear some fruit.  Maybe you’ve sat for years in worship, and you haven’t seen any changes in your life.  Maybe at some point you’ve even taken part in a small group Bible study, but you haven’t noticed much in the way of results.   But the things that lead us to have a strong and vigorous faith tend to be cumulative.  We tend to “catch” a fruitful Christian faith from being around other fruitful believers; as we spend time with them, we see time and time again what faithful, Christ-like living looks like…and it has a way of rubbing off on us.   Oh, I suppose spending one hour a week in worship might do it for us, to some degree—especially if we do across many years.  Taking part in a Bible study might do it for us—again, especially if we’re consistent in participating over a long time. But the thing that I’ve seen produce the most dynamic effect, is when we serve—or do ministry, together.  Occasionally I might run into somebody who’s served in some ministry at their church for a long, long time, and who’s become burned out by it and who’s regretted it.  But I’ve seen far more people whose faith has been energized by serving with others.   Why is it that we have so many at Rejoice who invest so many hours a week doing youth ministry, walking alongside someone who’s struggling, or cleaning or maintaining our facility, or printing worship bulletins, or working on our computer network, or doing other tasks that have to do with administration or leadership?  There’s just something fulfilling and uplifting about using our gifts to respond to a need, or to make something happen that needs to happen so that we can be church together.  It’s not something we can find in a career, or in our family life, or in any of the countless ways we have for distracting ourselves from the harsh realities of our existence.   

The next time you see images of a disaster, or that you hear of someone with a life-threatening condition, you might heed what goes on in your mind.   Beware of the subtle voice that says, “This could never happen to me.”  Or the one that says, “Oh, they must’ve done something to bring this on themselves.”   Or the one that says, “Oooo…I really suddenly feel like going to the mall!”    Because while we can deny it or reason it away, or distract ourselves from it as much as we want, the fact remains:  life is completely unpredictable.  Without warning, at any moment, life can be gone, or forever changed.   So, when tragedy comes to your attention, or if the cold hand of death or disaster touches our life, instead of rushing to put it behind us or averting our eyes or pretending that it’s not our problem, perhaps it can serve as a reminder that, at any moment, whether we deserve it or not, bad things can happen to us.  But we can also bear in our heart and mind that, even though we don’t deserve it, something wonderfully good has already happened to us.   In Christ, God’s great love has been poured out, for us and for the world.   Here and now, the good news of that love is there, like fertilizer, to feed and strengthen us.  Here and now, as long as we still lie and breathe, we have another chance…the chance to live a new life of fruitful service together.

Text:  Luke 13:31-35

UNSTOPPABLE

Five months ago, 19 year old speedskater JR Celski lay on the ice bleeding profusely after a skate had gashed a six-inch wide, 2 inch deep slice in his leg.  The gash had just missed the major artery in his leg; when he yanked the skate out of himself, he didn’t know how close he was to death.   He did manage to lose so much blood though, and he required so many stitches, that he didn’t know if he’d ever skate again.    A little more than a week ago, Celski won the bronze medal in the 1500 meter short track race in the Olympics.  The Winter Olympics has been chock-full this year of stories of amazingly dedicated athletes. There’s skier Lindsey Vonn, who bruised her shin days before the Olympics started, but who endured agonizing pain to win the gold in the women’s downhill, and a bronze medal in another event.    And then there’s Bode Miller, whose embarrassing performance and distracted behavior at the last Olympics had left him with a humiliating reputation…one that he overcame by refocusing his life and claiming his place on the podium as an Olympic champion this year. 

We’ve all met people like this—some of us are them.  People whose commitment to something is so great that the most daunting circumstances can’t stop them.   People who’ve survived multiple bouts with cancer, or who’ve come back from a devastating tragedy.   People who, through their persistence or patience or high level of skill, have managed to succeed at something that few others have.   Some people just aren’t going to let any obstacle get in their way.   In our gospel today, some of Jesus’ enemies, some religious leaders called Pharisees try to intimidate Jesus as he’s bound for Jerusalem.   The Pharisees claim to know of a death threat from a powerful ruler.  “Get away from here, Jesus,” they say to him.  “Herod wants to kill you.”  Perhaps they believed this would thwart Jesus from accomplishing his mission.  A mission that, as he’d openly stated, was going to be fulfilled in Jerusalem.   But these Pharisees got more than they bargained for.  Because, instead of turning tail and fleeing, as they might’ve hoped he would, Jesus instead replied in a way that showed he was not going to let fear of Herod, or of anyone else, get in his way.  He tells them that he’s not going to stop until he’s completely triumphed.  Now, Jesus has no illusions about what he’s up against; he calls Herod what he is--a wily and crafty fox, a predatory animal.  But then Jesus declares that he’s going to keep on fighting the forces of darkness that oppress peoples’ lives until he’s finished.  And that, he says, won’t be until “the third day.”  The third day, you’ll recall, was the day Jesus was raised from the dead after being arrested, tried, whipped and crucified.   Nothing…not even death itself, is going to stop Jesus!   Talk about commitment!  Talk about overcoming obstacles!   And the Lord Jesus didn’t just talk about doing it—as we know, he went on to actually do what he said he was going to do.   He walked straight into Jerusalem—a city that he knew full well had a reputation for killing those who were sent by God, and he compassionately embraced its people.  In fact, he made God’s grace and mercy known to all people everywhere, by embracing the cross.  All kinds of obstacles developed that might’ve derailed Jesus, and nothing—not one of them, was able to stop him from accomplishing the will of his heavenly Father. 

What are the obstacles that appear in our paths?  What are the things that develop to thwart us from doing what it is that we know God has called us to do?  As baptized people of God, we’re not only recipients of amazing promises, of forgiveness and life and salvation, but we’re also set apart and called by our Lord to be instruments for him to continue his work of making divine grace and mercy known in the world.  We all have gifts…gifts that God has given us and that God calls us to use to engage his mission together.   Here at Rejoice, the way we’ve come to express this mission is in terms of Growing Faith Together.  And we’ve developed a pretty good number of specific ways for people to do that.   There are our ministries of care and concern—TLC, Stephen’s Ministry, our Prayer Team.  There are our many youth and children’s ministries—youth groups and Sunday morning Christian education and confirmation, and church camp retreats and mission trips.  There’s our worship life, where we can all help to share the load, so that the tasks involved with supporting our worship services don’t become a burden on anyone.  And there’re lots more ways to serve in the areas of leadership and fellowship and stewardship and outreach.  There’s our small groups, there’s care and maintenance of our property; there’s a whole multitude of paths we can take to pitch in and help with the fulfilling yet constantly demanding work of Growing Faith Together.   

And yet why is it that so often, it can be difficult to find folks to step up and do what needs to be done?   Why is it that so often, it’s a last minute scramble to find ushers on Sunday morning?  Why doesn’t somebody take on the job of cleaning up and putting away the coffee pot, after things are through on Sunday? Why have our outreach team and our fellowship team and our Kids of the Kingdom ministry teams so often struggled right down to the wire to pull things off?  There are probably lots of reasons for this; a need for more effective leadership or better communication, the sheer number of possibilities for service we have here at Rejoice, for such a relatively small church.  But we have to ask if there aren’t maybe some other reasons—some obstacles that are arising to disrupt us from faithfully engaging God’s mission.  

Obstacles like…fear.  Fear that we’re going to get ourselves into something that’s going to drain us or frustrate us, when our life is perhaps already draining and frustrating enough.   We do have some rules of thumb here at Rejoice that are designed to keep folks from getting in too deeply; our council leaders work to make sure, for instance, that no one has more than 2 major roles at Rejoice, and that there is a clear end to peoples commitments when they agree to do something.   But in spite of the best efforts of our leaders, some of us might still fear that we’re being sucked into something that’s going to make our barely manageable life feel overwhelming.   

This past week, a nasty virus took over two of our household pc’s.  Man!  You don’t know how much you’ve got invested in a computer working properly until suddenly it stops doing it!  The kids need one for their homework, we use one to pay our bills and manage our finances—I should say Linda uses it to do those things… I use it to stay connected to folks at church and work on sermons and other projects when I’m at home.  Heck, I don’t even know where the phone books are at our house—I always just look up stuff like that online.  And now all of a sudden, we can’t do any of this.  What a hassle it is to deal with this kind of thing—and we’re still dealing with it.   Time consuming?  You bet!  Stressful?  Very.  For a few days there, as we were scrambling to cope with this, I know I wasn’t much fun to be around.  It felt like the fine balance in my life got way out of kilter, and there was just way too much coming at me.

Do you ever feel not managing your life very well—that your life is managing you?   The sense that things are on the verge of being out of control can lead to fear--the fear of opening ourself to anything that might push us over edge, into chaos—or into more chaos than we’re already enduring.  Of course, fear can also arise if we lack confidence in ourself, can’t it?  “What will people think of me if I do that?” “What if I mess up?”  “I’m not really cut out to do anything beyond what I’m already doing.”  Fear that comes from a lack of confidence can be as paralyzing as any obstacle there is. 

Or maybe we’re not fearful; maybe we’re just distracted.  We live in a culture where distractions abound, don’t we?   Sports, entertainment, an excess of consumer items…the whole worldwide web to surf, way more information coming at us than we could ever possibly need or process.  If we have kids, then the distractions multiply; we get pulled into their activities…we find ourself taking responsibility for their entertainment, we get roped into shopping and buying stuff for them, and we’ve got to monitor their internet use.  Yep… living in this part of the world in the 21^st century, it’s not hard at all to get pulled off track with distractions. 

Or, could we simply be consumed?   Consumed with the demands of what we think we have to do to keep a job…or to do a good job…or to manage the household  properly…or to raise our kids the right way…or to deal with our health…or to deal with the health of a family member.    Sometimes, we can allow ourselves to be defined by our circumstances—defined by a bad economy, by external or internal compulsion to excel, defined by misfortunes that come upon us, or that come upon those we know.   And once we let something like that define us, it consumes us—it burns up so much time or energy that there’s not much left for anything or anyone else. 

Fear.  Distractions.  Being consumed.  These are just a few of the obstacles that can hinder us from staying engaged with God’s mission.  Our Lord Jesus faced and moved right through every obstacle in his path.  Nothing stopped him from sticking to the tasks he’d been called to accomplish.   And he’s called you and me to follow him.  Is there anything that can lead us through those things that stand in our paths, so that we can show something of the kind of commitment that our Lord demonstrated?   Or is this a hopeless cause—something we shouldn’t even bother thinking about? 

I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard that originally the word “Christian” was supposed to mean, “model of Christ.”   I think the idea is that we’re supposed to model for others what our Lord Jesus is like.  But one definition of “model” is “a cheap imitation of the real thing.”   We’re spiritually broken beings, you and I.  Labeling ourselves “Christians” doesn’t change that fact.   Because of our broken human condition, we’re never going to fully embrace the work God has for us in the world, on the level that the Lord Jesus did.   But we’re also beings who, through the cleansing waters of our baptism, have been forgiven.   And that forgiveness means that we can walk in a day-to-day relationship with God; it means we have a place here with God and God’s people, now and forever; we don’t have to spend any of our time or energy worrying about what’s going to happen after we die; we have the assurance that we’ll be in God’s care always.  Being baptized also means we have God’s Spirit dwelling in and among us…and it means we’ve been caught up in something that’s far greater than ourselves.   We’ve been swept up in the mighty flow of grace and love that Christ first poured out at the cross, and that continues to be poured out to this day in the faithful service and loving care of faithful people who bear the name of Christ.   I’m convinced that by going with that flow…by trusting in God’s promises, and by seeking God’s help to overcome the obstacles that stand in our way, we can become, not perfectly Christ-like, but more faithful, more Christ-like people.  Obstacles will always arise, obstacles that could easily stop us.  But the One who in baptism has claimed us to be his own, the One who even the grave itself couldn’t hinder, our unstoppable God, can empower us. Swept along by in the powerful flow of his love, whatever obstructions we encounter, we can keep on moving.   It’s his purpose, his mission that we’re a part of, and he can accomplish it, in and through us.

Text:   Luke 4:1-13

TESTED

At the end of the second week after Christmas break, Elsie’s parents got an email from one of her teachers.   “Elsie only scored a 55 on her social studies exam.   This is puzzling, since she’s been such an excellent student,” the teacher wrote. “Perhaps you could talk with her about it and find out what’s going on.”   So, the next chance they had, the parents got with Elsie, and they asked her what the problem was.  “Oh nothing,” Elsie said.  “You know how they always mark things down after the holidays.”  

To keep her students on their toes, a math teacher decided to give an oral exam right at the beginning of class.   “Jeremy,” she said, “What are 5, 8, and 304?”   

“Aw, that’s easy,” Jeremy answered.  “CBS, ABC and the Cartoon Network.” 

A father was talking to his college aged son on the phone.  “So,” said the dad, “how’d you do on your final exams?”    “Oh--I’ve got some great news, Dad!  You won’t have to pay for any new text books… I’m taking the same classes over again next semester!”

Tests.   It seems every time we turn around, our kids are taking tests these days.  There’s the SAT, the ACT and other college entrance exams.   There are the TAKS tests…despised by teachers and students alike.  There are the practice TAKS tests.  And there’s all those other tests kids have to take to get ready for the TAKS and the practice TAKS and the SATs and the ACTs.  In one way or another, for all of us, each day contains tests of one kind or another. I used to scare the bejeebers out of my confirmation students by telling them there’d be this huge comprehensive test at the end of their two years of confirmation.  But then, when the big day came, I’d simply explain to them, “There is no written exam today.  But you’re still going to be tested.  Every day for the rest of your life, you’re going to be tested on everything you’ve learned here in confirmation classes.  Sometimes you’ll pass the tests and sometimes you’ll fail.  But make no mistake about it…you will be tested.”   Of course, I couldn’t keep pulling off that stunt for long; word got out to the younger kids who were coming up into confirmation… “Hey…don’t bother studying for pastor’s comprehensive…there really is no test!”  It was fun while it lasted, though—see the mixed look of relief and distress on the kids’ faces as they learned that there was no test that day…but that many more real tests were coming. 

In our gospel today, the Lord Jesus is tested.  Tested by the devil…out in the wilderness.    Tested, from what we can see, mainly on one subject:  his faith in his own identity as Son of God.    Now, Jesus had just been baptized; at his baptism, the Holy Spirit had descended on him, and he’d heard the voice from heaven address him, telling him he was God’s Beloved Son.   Then, full of the Holy Spirit, it says here in Luke 4, he was led out “in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted--or, as the original Greek would be literally translated, “he was tested…by the devil.”

The wilderness.   Figuratively speaking, it’s a place we all wind up in, sooner or later.  Maybe we’re experiencing a time of great uncertainty about the future, a period when a job or a relationship or our health has left us high and dry.    Maybe it’s the wilderness of deep anxiety over the behavior and choices of one of our children.   Maybe we or a loved one have had to struggle deeply with some compulsive or addictive behavior.   In one way or another, at some point, most of us wind up out in the wilderness.  In a place of vulnerability, where the usual resources we have to sustain us simply aren’t there.   It’s a place of great hunger; we yearn in those times to get to a place where we can enjoy a sense of well-being again.   And, when we’re in the wilderness…we’re usually stuck there, for a while.   It says Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days.  Noah’s ark floated while the rains fell for forty days and forty nights.  For forty years, the ancient Israelites wandered with Moses in the wilderness.   Forty appears to be Bible talk for “a long, long time.”  When we’re enduring a wilderness period in our life, it seems to go on and on and on, doesn’t it?  It just keeps dragging along, day after day, for way too long.    And it saps us.  It wears us down. 

I think that’s part of what makes the wilderness sort of a magnet for the devil.   We don’t have our normal resources.  We get worn down over time.  And so we’re spiritually vulnerable.   A perfect chance for the evil one to test us, to see just how real our faith in God is.  That seems to be what the devil is really after—our faith, the basis of our relationship with God.  Because, if he can destroy our faith in God, then he can set his grappling hook of despair into our hearts and he can drag us along wherever he wants to.  Despairing people become people who just don’t care…they don’t care about others, and eventually they don’t even care about themselves.   Despairing people give up on there being any meaning or purpose in life.   On the other hand, faith in God, roots our lives in the One who is the source of all purpose and meaning for life.  The powers of darkness know that, if you remove a person’s faith connection to God, then you’ve essentially got an empty soul that just aimlessly drifts about, and that can be easily led almost anywhere.

The Lord Jesus’ faith was tested.  Specifically, his faith in the word of God that was spoken to him at his baptism, “You are my Son, the beloved…” The voice from heaven had told him.  Out in the wilderness, the devil comes to him and says, “If you are the Son of God….”  Can you hear the undermining implication in that statement?   “If you are the son of God, prove it!  Come on Jesus, you don’t really think that you warrant that title, ‘Son of God,’ do you?    If you were really a Son of God, you could do some incredible sign, like…turn these stones into bread!  C’mon, you know how hungry you are, so let’s see you do it, Jesus…if you are the son of God.”   

You and I have been named sons and daughters of God.  In our baptism, we’ve been adopted as God’s own beloved children.   And that identity, “child of God” is the basis for trusting all of the rest of the promises God gives to us through baptism.  If God is our heavenly father then of course he forgives us; of course he wants us to be with him forever.  Wilderness times though, can be times when we find ourselves questioning this identity.  “Am I really loved by God?  Does God really consider me one of his own?  If so, why am I suffering through this awful time?  Why don’t things get better...if I’m really a son or daughter of God?”   We might even try to do something to make things better, and then despair when it doesn’t work as we’d hoped.

There are other ways the devil can play this game.  “Okay Jesus…if you’re really son of God, then--you deserve the best!  So, just do whatever you have to do in order to get everything you really want; do whatever you must, and it will all be yours.”  When we’re in the wilderness, we’re vulnerable to making bad choices, vulnerable to pursuing things we wouldn’t normally pursue.  Things that, in the end, can become idols—objects of worship that take the place of the God who alone is worthy of our worship.    How easy it is when we’re longing for things to be better, to get caught up in just how good they could be if only we achieved the right things.  Never mind that the ‘right things’ so often lead to destruction, to other people and, in the end, to us ourselves; in certain circumstances, those things can have a very powerful appeal.   “After all, if God really loves me enough to call me his own child, don’t I deserve more?  Don’t I deserve all that I long to have?”  And before we know it, we’re bowing down at the altar of an all-consuming job…or we’re spending money we don’t have, or we’re burning through resources that we have but that we really ought to be saving.  

There are lots of different ways our minds can be led to think.  “Jesus, if you’re really a son of God, then, go ahead…take a risk!  Do something that will prove who you are…something that will demonstrate, once and for all, how deep your faith in God is.    If the devil can’t destroy our faith, he’ll try to twist it into something unwholesome— even into something downright toxic.    A twisted faith can be almost as good as no faith at all. When we’re worn down emotionally and mentally by circumstances, who knows—we might actually go for this.  Developing an inappropriate relationship…blowing off time with our family…gambling…abusing drugs…eating or drinking too much of the wrong thing.  Stuff that doesn’t sound good at all when we’re rested and relaxed can somehow seem a lot more appealing to us when we’re so tapped out that we’re not thinking clearly.  A lot of bad decisions are made when people are, for whatever reason, kind of a mess.  At times like this, many of us find ourselves being tested…and many of us fail the test.   

The Lord Jesus, however, passed his test. Even though he was vulnerable, even though he was very hungry, even though he was undoubtedly weak and tired and a mess, Jesus succeeded where many of us tend to fail.  And this wasn’t his only test.  It says that, when the devil had finished testing Jesus in the wilderness, “he departed from him until an opportune time.”   An opportune time.  The most opportune time appears to have been when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, facing imminent arrest and torture and death at the hands of his enemies.   There he knelt in prayer, and he asked that “this cup would pass from” him—he expressed to his heavenly Father his earnest desire for a way out of the appalling challenge he faced.  But ultimately, there in the garden, he submitted to his Father’s will.   He didn’t try to run away from the horrible trial he knew was about to begin; he stayed and he faced the challenge.   And so the Lord Jesus passed his final test.

Because Jesus passed his tests—especially that final one in order to fulfill God’s purpose, you and I are assured that, regardless of how well we do on our tests, we are still precious to God.   The price Jesus the firstborn Son of God paid for us on the cross shows us just how precious we are to God. Through baptism our Father in heaven assures each of us personally that we are his beloved children.  But, we shouldn’t be surprised when we too face challenges at opportune times.  In fact, we should expect that our identity as God’s sons and daughters will be called into question, or even used to twist our faith into something unwholesome.    As long as we hang onto the basic promises of our Baptism—the promise that we are God’s adopted children, the promise that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, and the promise that we have a place with God and God’s people forever…as long as we cling to those promises, then we can share in our Lord’s triumph over the power of sin and the devil.  

Tests will come our way…throughout our lives. Especially in those opportune wilderness periods, when circumstances drain us of our vitality.   But in the end, what’s most important isn’t whether we pass or whether we fail each individual test.   What’s most important is that we look to Jesus…that we look to his proven excellence. to the tests that he passed.  Because of his great love for us, demonstrated so proficiently on the cross, our failures are not the end of the story.  Heck, we’re forgiven by God, so we can always learn and grow from our failures, right?   And, holding onto our baptismal identity as God’s children, who knows? Some day, on some level, we too might even hope to excel—just like our big brother, Jesus.

Text:  Luke 9:28-36

BUILDING A FRAMEWORK

It’d been the most intense 18 months of my life.   I had served with 5 other Lutheran young adults on this full-time, cross-cultural mission team to Africa.   We had lived together, worked together, travelled together, eaten, slept, and breathed together for a year and a half.  We’d visited Lutheran churches across a pretty good part of this country.   And we’d gone all through Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa, serving Lutheran churches there, meeting local people in open market places and schools and hospitals, staying with them in their mud houses with dirt floors and grass roofs.  We’d seen and experienced things none of us would ever have imagined before we went.  We’d been deeply exposed to the daily struggles and suffering of African people…and to their great dignity and generosity.   We’d seen the political tensions that still existed there after a recent coup attempt in Kenyans; four of us had even spent a few days in Tanzanian jails, when a misunderstanding arose at the border between Tanzania and  Kenya.   The six of us had gone through a lot together--including the stress that takes place when that many very different personalities live and work closely together, day-in and day-out.   I mean, when you’re spending that much time together--doing so much together for such a long time, well, you develop an acute awareness of the shortcomings and rough edges of everyone—theirs and yours.   In fact, that part wore on me so much that I remember the predominant recurring thought I had during the last couple of months of my team commitment. It was: “Thank God, it’s almost over!”     And then, suddenly…it was over.   We had a homecoming program and reception up in St. Paul, we said our goodbyes to each other…and that was it.   Suddenly these 5 team members who I’d gone through so much with, these people who I’d come to know so much about and who knew so much about me, were gone.   My parents had driven up from Illinois to Minnesota for the team homecoming, and after the reception I’d climbed into the back seat of their car to return home with them…and that’s when it all began to sink in…the immensity of everything I’d just been through with my team members.  What we’d just lived through together was an incredible experience—one that had produced a profound impact on me.  It would take a while before I could wrap my mind around it--enough to start to figure out what to do with all that’d happened during that chapter of my life.   For a long time, I didn’t even try to talk about it, with anyone.   I didn’t know how to talk about it with anybody who hadn’t gone through it all.  I didn’t really understand what’d taken place.  All I knew for sure was that I was never going to be the same again.

I wonder if that’s something like the way Peter, James and John must’ve felt, after their intense encounter up on the mountaintop.    At the very end of our gospel today, after they’d witnessed this incredible and somewhat terrifying series of events involving the Lord Jesus, it says that “They kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”    Of course, you could say that “the things they had seen” were somewhat akin to a modern-day alien sighting.   A part of what kept them mum may have been the thought that, if they said anything about it, nobody would believe them!    Or that people would think they were nuts!  But no…obviously, eventually, they did get around to telling people what they’d witnessed, as bizarre as it was.  After all, we have this record of their testimony, right here in Luke’s gospel.  So, I suspect what prevented these three followers of Jesus from talking about it “in those days”—in the days immediately after the strange mountaintop episode, was that they had to struggle for a while to make sense of it all. They had to first figure out what they were going to say to people before they could start to say anything meaningful.   In time, after their Lord had gone to Jerusalem to suffer and die and  rise from the grave, just as he’d said he would…and after the promised Holy Spirit came upon them, in time, Peter, James and John were among the most vocal of witnesses to all that they had seen when they were with Jesus.   In due course, they did manage to make enough sense of this, and of all the other astonishing things God accomplished in and through Jesus, so that they were able to share about their experiences, with many others.  The sequel to Luke’s gospel, the book of Acts, is the account of how Peter and Paul and others did just this, throughout the whole Roman Empire. 

What I’d like for you to consider this morning is this:  the God who manifested this awesome revelation to these three disciples in what’s now called Jesus’ “Transfiguration”— this God is always at work, revealing things to you and to me.  Now, the means he uses to reveal stuff to us, and even the things he reveals to us may not be as striking as what those three original followers of Jesus witnessed up on the mountain.  But our Lord is constantly illuminating us in one way or another, about things that are significant.    And eventually, you and I are going to be called upon to share with others our testimony about the things we have seen.  In fact, I’d propose that one of the signs of a growing and maturing Christian faith is when we are able to give a witness to the extraordinary ways we see God working in our lives and in our world.  

“Who, me?  Talk about God...or about my faith?   To somebody else?   You gotta be kidding!”    Nope.   If you are baptized, then you are called, along with the rest of us who are baptized, to live a life of love, right?  And not just the mushy Valentines Day card message kind of love.  We who are baptized as followers of the Lord Jesus are called to love as our Lord has loved us.  That’s a roll-up-your-sleeves, get-in-there-and-pick-up-your-cross kind of love.  It’s the kind of love that sets the self aside for the sake of the other.  Now, think in terms of somebody who doesn’t know much at all about the God’s love as it’s been revealed to you and me in Christ.  Or, think of someone who hasn’t yet learned to walk in a trust relationship with God…somebody who’s really struggling in the face of some pretty serious problems they’re having.  Think about how they might benefit from hearing from someone who has learned to trust God, or from somebody who, amidst their struggles, has had God’s grace and comfort, and strength and purpose revealed to them.

None of us gets there on our own, do we?  If you have begun to trust God in the face of life’s challenges, then I’d say that it’s because in all kinds of ways, throughout your life, the Lord has helped you to see and grasp the depths of his love for you.  Observing faithful family members calling upon God to help them through their struggles …attending worship and listening to sermons…taking part in a small group Bible study and hearing a group member share about what God has done for them.  In all kinds of ways, through all kinds of people, God has worked to reveal himself to you.  So, if you’re called to love as you’ve been loved, then isn’t it part of your calling to help others to grasp the benefits of a faith walk with God?

Of course, not all of us come with a built-in capacity to put into words the things we’ve seen God doing in our life.   Some of us have a bit of a knack for stuff like that.  I was an English major; that’s because putting things into words tends to come easier for me than it does for many.   Now, if you’re talking about doing math, or building something, I’m not the guy you want to turn to.  But I can put thoughts into words.   In fact, sometimes it can be kind of hard for me to stop putting things into words.  But that’s not how it is for most folks.   Most folks are more like I think Peter James and John probably were. Especially when it comes to the things of faith.  Undoubtedly, for a lot of you, it can take quite awhile to put it all together in a way that makes sense to you…let alone in a way that’s going to be comprehensible to somebody else.  

There are 20 adults among us right now who are taking part in a six-week Bible study now on Sunday mornings at Rejoice.  I want to commend you folks—along with anyone else who’s taking part in any other in-depth Bible study.   And not just because “Studying the Bible” is one of our Marks of Disciplelife at Rejoice.    Bible study is an important way to develop our framework of understanding as God’s people.  It’s an important way to develop our framework of understanding as God’s people.  We all go through life with some way that we’ve developed of making sense of the world and of our place in it.  Being a person of faith involves the need to integrate into our framework of understanding some very unusual things.  Things that a lot of the people around us aren’t exposed to very much.  Oh, you and I may not experience anything like those three disciples up on the mountaintop did, that day the Lord was transfigured, and he talked to Moses and Elijah, and when a voice addressed the disciples from a mysterious cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!”   We don’t typically witness things like that.  But we can go through some pretty heavy-duty things, at times.  Things that, once we’ve experienced them, can leave us forever changed.   Maybe it’s a tour of combat duty.  Maybe it’s a spiritual awakening that comes with some significant life-passage, like having a baby, or getting married.  Maybe during a period of unemployment, or in a time of grief, or illness, we receive God’s gracious, saving help in a way we never knew before that we could.  Perhaps we just beheld the wonder of a prayer answered, or of a hope fulfilled, and that’s left us with a new sense of wonder and gratitude at how intimately responsive God is to our every need.   Studying the Scriptures is can help us to incorporate these experiences into our framework of understanding.   The Bible, you see, contains a story—the story of God and God’s people.  And because we are among God’s people, this story is our story.  The language of this story is our language, and like any language, it helps us to understand things.  So, the better-acquainted we are with this story, the better-equipped we’re going to be to develop our framework of understanding.

Ultimately, until we have some way of understanding our faith experiences ourself, we’re not going to be ready to share about them with anyone else.   But, when it comes to understanding our faith, we don’t have to start from scratch.  The Bible is filled with insight on what it means to be people of faith, and to live and struggle as people of faith.  We’re not on our own…we have the Scriptures to help us make sense of it all.  Not only that, but our Lord Jesus himself meets us right here every week, to assure us of his abiding presence and love for us as we try to make sense of it all.   As we abide in him by hearing his Word and by sharing his Sacrament, he’s promised that his Spirit will abide with us throughout the week, to give us all wisdom and insight and knowledge.   And, alongside of all of this, there are those among us who’ve already developed their faith understanding, to the point where they can show us how to articulate what it is we need to say.  A couple of weeks ago, I asked one of the fellas in the Men’s Bible Study group to come up with a description of what the group is about, along with some other basic information, so we can publish it.   What he came up with was this:  “In Men's Bible Study we learn more about how Christ works with us and in us to help build stronger family and personal relationships.  We share with each other the triumphs and disappointments of walking through life with Jesus.”  Now, I don’t think I could’ve put it into words like that, but as I consider it, that’s pretty much what happens at Men’s Bible Study.  Well, that and the usual guy stuff about trucks, transmissions, and jock itch….,

Now, this is a church made up of quite a few lifelong Lutherans.  So, something tells me that many among us may not have even tried to put our faith into words or think much about our faith, since we were in confirmation class.    And for some of us, that’s been a long, long time!    When it comes to matters of faith, we shouldn’t expect to always be able to make sense of them and talk about them right off the bat.  But neither can we expect that we’ll never be called upon to talk about our faith.   We are all called, you and I, to share the good news of God’s grace and love in Christ, with those around us who need that good news.   And in this part of the country, where many are oppressed by a distorted view of God as an angry judge, you know there are a lot of people out there who need our good news.  We have the Bible to provide us with a way to look at things and with some words we can use.  We have a living Lord who’s suffered and died for us, and who continues to be present for us, revealing his great love.  We have his Spirit, within and among us, to enlighten us.   And we have other growing, faithful disciples to help us as well.   Is there any good reason why we shouldn’t all finally come to the place where we’re ready and able to tell others of “the things we have seen”?

Text:  John 2:1-11

CAMOUFLAGE

Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, “Why is the bride dressed in white?”  “Because,” the mother explained, “white is the color of happiness, and this is the happiest day of her life.”  The little girl looked thoughtful for amoment, and then she said, “So why is the groom wearing black?”  

Okay, so one antenna gets married to another antenna.  The wedding wasn’t that good, but the reception was great! 

I know.  That one was a bit painful, but don’t worry, that’s it…you’ve just heard my whole repertoire of jokes about weddings.  This morning we’re going to reflect for a bit on the wedding at Cana in our gospel today, and so I had a choice…either I could start with some jokes about wine or some jokes about weddings.  You got the better selection, believe me….

Weddings.  Traditional weddings today in North America and weddings in 1^st century Galilee are two very different birds.   Having officiated at my share of them, I can say without qualification that traditional weddings today are something of a production.   Of those that I’ve seen, the focus is largely on the couple—on the ceremony that they’ve planned, and on certain rituals that they engage in at the ceremony and the reception.  At the ceremony, there’s the bride’s dress, there’s the walk down the aisle, there’s the vows the couple chooses to speak to each other--some written by the couple themself, there’s the music they’ve selected to have played or sung during the service that reveals the couples’ taste…and there’s that kiss they give to each other–either a big, honkin’, passionate smooch or a warm, affectionate brush of the lips.   Then at the reception, there’s the clinking of glasses with spoons to get the bride and groom to kiss some more, there’s the couple’s first married dance, the cutting of the cake, the throwing of the bouquet, the removal and snapping of the garter…you know how it always goes.   Much of what goes on in traditional weddings today is focused on the bride and groom…weddings as we know them tend to be kind of a show, and the bride and groom are the main actors.  

In 1^st century Galilee, things were considerably different.  For those who attended a wedding like the one Jesus and his mother were at in our gospel reading, the focus was way more on the big party that accompanied the wedding ceremony.  The party could last literally for days.  Basically it went on for as long as the “party supplies” lasted.  People didn’t have TV sets or Wii’s or football stadiums or water parks to go to; they didn’t have any of the trappings of a modern, affluent society.  There wasn’t much for anyone to do but work and survive.   Except…when a wedding came along.  Then it was time to put the drudgery of work aside and to forget about the hardships of trying to eke out a subsistence living in a forgotten rural corner of the Roman empire.  A wedding was an excuse—a license, to party!   It was one of the few opportunities folks had to just kick back and chill and have fun and mellow out with your family and friends.   Everybody in the community would be invited to a wedding, and everybody in the community would attend.  Even folks from nearby communities would show up.  After all, like I said, there really wasn’t much else to do in that time and place!  

But at this particular 1^st century Galilean wedding party, we’re told, the wine gave out.   Why was this an issue? Well, because, they didn’t have Shiner!  They didn’t have anything else, either, that would help folks unwind, and that would lend the occasion a “celebrative atmosphere.”  And, there were no stores in the area where you could just send somebody out for a case or three of Chianti.  For most of the guests, the wine was the focus.  And either somebody had planned poorly and not ordered enough wine, or the groom was too poor to afford much wine.  In any case, the wine was now… all gone.  And basically, what that meant was… “The party’s over…”   Once word leaked out that the wine had dried up, all the guests would start to disappear.  

Apparently, that would’ve been a real bummer for someone.  I don’t know; perhaps it would have been humiliating for the groom, who was responsible for providing the open wine-bar.  Or maybe it’s just that everyone would’ve just been very disappointed that they’d now have to return to the daily grind of their difficult lives.    For whatever reason, Jesus’ mother was concerned about the wine problem…concerned enough to tell her son about it.  Like any good mom, she knew her son…she knew that Jesus was the one person there who could do something about the situation.   There’s this little exchange that then takes place between Jesus and his mother. She tells him about the problem.  There’s some resistance on his part to doing what she was implying he ought to do.  “What is this to you and me?” Jesus responds, “My hour has not yet come,” he says.  This, we learn later in the gospel, is a reference to the hour of his suffering, death and resurrection, the hour when he would give his life to redeem the world.  Jesus knows that it’s not time for that yet.  But Jesus’ mom knows her son.  She knows not only what he’s capable of doing, but she knows his character.  She knows his inclination to show grace and care for peoples’ needs whenever he could.   And so she instructs the servants there to do whatever Jesus tells them to do.  Sure enough, Jesus tells them to fill up these big, approximately 20-gallon purification containers with water, and to then take a cup of it to the chief steward--the one hired by the groom to manage the party.  The servants do as Jesus tells them—they fill the six huge containers, bring the steward a cup of it without telling him where it came from, and the rest is, well history!   The wedding celebration that was about to fade into oblivion gets a big kick start, the groom comes off looking great for reserving the best wine for last, and everybody there is readayyyy to par-tayyy!   And the significance of this, we’re told, was that this was the first of Jesus signs, through which he “revealed his glory.”  

Pretty curious, isn’t it?  Jesus is the divine Word made flesh; he’s God come among us as a human being to shine the light of divine love into the darkness, to redeem the world.  And this is the way he begins his saving work?   By making it possible for a large group of people to shuck their responsibilities and maintain their buzz?  Actually, it’s even worse than it sounds.  Because among good, decent Jews, Galilee was known as a disreputable territory.  Galilee was a region filled with gentiles-- and with all kinds of other bad and scandalous characters.    Heck, it wasn’t even really a part of Judea.  Respectable Jews just didn’t even hang out in Galilee.  So Jesus not only chooses reveal his glory by juicing up a wedding party, but he does it among those considered by many to be faithless scoundrels.   It’d be like me or some other pastor putting a collar on and going to buy rounds for everyone at the seediest bar in North Texas.   You know, a place along the freeway called something like, “Scuzzy Jake’s Private Club.” 

Such is the time and place where Jesus chose to do his first sign—his first revelation of God’s saving power and love.  What could possibly come of a sign like that, in a place like that?  And yet, it seems, the result was actually a very good one.  Because, while Jesus kept a low profile—he didn’t go around advertising to everyone present that he was the one who saved the wedding party, there were a handful of folks there who saw the whole thing:  Jesus’ first disciples, who’d come to the wedding with him.  And the outcome of what they’d seen here, we’re told, was that these disciples believed in Jesus.  As crazy as it seems, Jesus’ miraculous provision of adult beverages in this scandalous place accomplished a significant objective; Jesus now not only had followers; he had followers who were ready to put their trust in him as a vehicle of God’s grace and power in the world.  

I don’t know.  I guess, God has this way about him.  This way of doing things, not in big, flashy, widely respectable gestures…but through commonplace, at times even somewhat offensive methods.   Like, by appearing among us as a baby born in a smelly stable…or like by calling some grubby, uneducated fishermen to be his first disciples. Like, by revealing his divine power and concern by turning some 120 gallons of water into a mass quantity of alcoholic beverage.   Or like pouring out the blessings of divine love to the world by suffering and dying like a criminal, nailed to a cross.

Our favorite theologian, Martin Luther once said that, “God hides his pearls in a pile of dung, so the devil can't find them."   Don’t you just love that quote?  “God hides his pearls in a pile of dung, so the devil can't find them."    Would it change how you feel about it if I told you that Luther was actually talking about you and me?  And that we’re not the pearls in the equation?  What does he mean “God hides his peals in piles of dung”?  By claiming us to be his own through baptism…by placing his Holy Spirit within us and among us…by calling us to live lives of Christ-like love, rooted in a relationship with him, our Lord hasn’t selected the most upright, pure, wholesome crowd of folks there are.  No, he’s chosen just some everyday, profane folks.  He’s chosen some people with plenty of flaws and lots of hang-ups. I mean , let’s be straight.  If we get down to it, most of us have done things in our lives that we wouldn’t want even to talk about, especially in polite company.  And yet, we’re the ones God has chosen to carry out the work he began at Cana in Galilee...the work of revealing his glory and love to the world.  

And the situations where he chooses to do that work are often as low-key and maybe even as disreputable as the water-to-wine Galilean party-saving stunt.   It can happen when, for instance, we elect to associate with somebody who everyone else at work or at school despises—and for good reason.  It can happen when we lean into somebody’s pain or grief, asking an open-ended question and then simply listening quietly and sympathetically as they pour out their heart and their tears.  It can happen as we step up to do some task that nobody else is willing to do, giving whatever it is we’re able to pull something off that, even if it’s only for the moment, means something to an individual or to a group of people. 

Maybe that’s what suddenly occurred to Jesus after he initially resisted his mom’s request to do something…that people often come to experience and trust in the reality of God’s love in the most mundane, the most peculiar, sometimes the most unseemly of ways.  What may seem to us like the wrong time or the wrong place, could turn out to be exactly the right time and place for God to use us most effectively.  After all, God’s work in the world, the work of making his wonderful love known, in order to call people into a saving relationship with him…God’s work is being relentlessly opposed by those forces that are enemies to God and to God’s ways.   If you’ve been on the planet for a while, then you know…behind the scenes of our human story, there’s a spiritual war going on, a war where the forces of God and the forces that spawn brokenness and despair are constantly battling for peoples’ souls.   It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that God frequently prefers to camouflage his work, by revealing his gracious hand in rather unexpected people and circumstances. 

So, the next time you have an opportunity to do something…maybe because you have a skill set or a position or a personality that makes someone turn to you…instead of flat dismissing it, instead of going with your inclination to discount the idea, because at first glance it doesn’t seem like it’s right for you, or dignified enough, or it doesn’t appear to be likely to accomplish much or win you much admiration …next time, consider the Lord Jesus and his behind-the-scenes wine-making work at a Galilean wedding.   Open yourself to the possibility—the probability?-- that the good news of God’s grace in Christ is often best revealed in the exactly this type of situation.  Consider how you might be camouflaged as God’s instrument, in the break room at work, or at a neighborhood social occasion, or at those sporting events you attend to watch your kids.  Consider how, while you’re out working in the yard or shopping at Wal Mart, as you’re taking a walk through the neighborhood, or when the guy comes to fix your refrigerator…consider how, as strange as it may seem to us, any moment could be God’s moment—a moment when God can use you to bring to light his power and love.

We live in a culture of overkill.  It’s like, everything we do, we have to way overdo it.   And while many other holidays reflect this, at no time is it more obvious than at this time of year.   Christmas isn’t until December 25^th, but retail store shelves were already selling Christmas right after Halloween.  Even KLTY, the region’s main Christian radio station, promotes itself as “waiting to play Christmas music until the time it should be played…the day AFTER Thanksgiving!”   As if that was some huge accomplishment, to wait until then.   By this point in December, you can drive through any housing development and see an unbelievable array of holiday decorations.   Homes colorfully and gaudily lit up from ground to roof.   Yards jam-packed with lighted reindeer and Santas, and with blow-up, caroling snowmen and penguins on choo-choo trains, and candy canes and manger scenes galore.  I was cruising down Preston Road in Frisco last week, and there it was, right alongside the road in front of a carwash:  a 30 foot-tall Santa Claus!   Now, you expect businesses to go overboard this time of year.  But now, even residential neighborhoods are getting to where, if you don’t overdo the decorations, it’s like you’re some kind of Scrooge—dissing the holiday!   And then there’s those endless holiday obligations.    I overheard somebody recently mention that they’d just sent out 130 Christmas cards—each of them with a personal, hand-written note.  And yet it’s not hard to imagine that some of us might be going, “Only 130?  That’s nothing!”   And what about shopping?  Have you got your Christmas shopping done yet?  If your answer is yes, are you sure you’ve got it done?   After all, there’s always another sale…and even if there’s nothing else you need to get, sometimes another sale means you could return something you got at onestore in order to take advantage of a better deal on that item at another store.  And, what if somebody you haven’t gotten anything for suddenly decides this year to give you a gift?  Doesn’t that mean you should reciprocate?  And oh, yeah—there’s that holiday party, where everyone is expected to bring something for the gift exchange.   And—oh my gosh, the relatives are coming to your place this year, and that means you’ve still got a ton of groceries to buy!  In a society that thrives on over-consumption, at this time of year, it’s like the volume gets turned way up.  We over-decorate, over- shop, overspend, overeat, and over-function, to the point of overkill.   It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?

But then there’s our gospel today.  In the midst of all this excess, we hear John’s response to the crowds who asked him, “What then should we do?”  As you may recall from last week’s reading from Luke’s gospel, the word of God came to John, the son of a small town priest, who then went around the region of the Jordan “proclaiming a baptism of repentance, for the forgiveness of sins.”   As Luke portrays it, John did this in fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s vision—a vision of leveling out this world’s injustices and inequities…by lifting up those who are poor and oppressed and humbling the rich and the mighty.   Now, there’s no evidence that the world changed much as a result of John’s call for repentance—at least not directly as a result of it.  John did succeeded in getting people to ask how, specifically, they were called to turn their lives around to be in line with God’s work in the world.  He succeeded in getting some to ask what the shape of repentance should be for them.   John’s answer, found in today’sgospel, was that those who had plenty were to share with those who lacked what they needed…and that those who had power over others were to stop abusing their power, and live contentedly with what they have.   The implication, of course, was that just the opposite was taking place…the have’s were hoarding, while the have-nots were going without, and those who had power were using that power togain advantage and greedily take whatever they could from those they had power over.   Specifically addressed by John in these respects were tax collectors and soldiers—individuals whose positions were aligned with the absolute power of Rome, and who were known for taking advantage of their positions. 

Many people—probably especially the have-nots and powerless among the crowds, liked what they heard from John.   And it says they were “filled with expectation,” wondering if John might be the promised Messiah—the savior king, sent by God, to rescue the people from the Romans and from those who derived their power from Rome.  “Is this John the One?” people were asking.  But John denied it, and he clearly directed them to “One who was yet to come,” to One who, John said, would be “more powerful than” him.   Ultimately, John’s call for repentance—even specifically spelled out as it was, wasn’t going to save anyone.  Ultimately, it would be another who would bring salvation. 

I wonder…what if John were to appear here today?  What if, moved by the word of God, a John-the-Baptist-like figure were to show up among us, preaching repentance? …calling for us to change the direction of our lives and to get ourselves in line with God’s purposes in the world?  And what if we were to respond by saying, “Okay then, what should we do?”  What would the shape of repentance look likefor us?  

I don’t know, you might see it differently, but somehow I think it’d have something to do with all of this overkill we engage in.   Somehow I have to believe, we’d be called upon to start reining in some of ourextreme excesses.  It seems to me, one thing we might be told to do, is to moderate our approach to the holidays…you know, to scale it all back, considerably.   We might be called, for example, to invest less in buying and exchanging gifts with those we know…and to restrain ourselves a bit on all the seasonal decorations; believe it or not, Garden Ridge and Wal Mart would likely still have plenty of businesswithout us—and Christmas will still come even if we don’t put all that strain on the power grid with all those lights.  We might even be directed to give ourself a break from the obligation to send all those cardsto everyone, or to attend or host those parties.   And finally, set free from this seasonal insanity, we might then be gently re-directed to look to and respond to the needs of some whose experience is far-removed from that of a suburban North American household.   Like, perhaps, some people living in rural African communities.  Some people whose daily life-and death struggle would be transformed with the simple addition, say, of a fresh water well.  $3500.  That’s all it takes for an organization called “Water to Thrive” to build one well, for a community either in Sierra Leone in West Africa, or in Ethiopia inEast Africa. 

$3500.  That’s 35 of us, each giving a gift of $100, or 100 of us giving gifts of $35 each.   We have the means and the power, you and I, to change the lives of 300-500 impoverished people!  If only we could somehow contain some of those excesses, and instead respond to some folks who, due to their desperate circumstances, are very close to God’s heart.   

The origin of “Water to Thrive” as an organization is a fascinating story.  Water to Thrive emerged from an adult Bible study—a bible study that was conducted during the summer of 2007 at Triumphant Love Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas. Over the course of six weeks, an average of 40 adults gathered at Triumphant Lutheran to focus on the topics of world hunger and poverty.  During one session the group learned about the water crisis in rural Africa.  They heard about a development organization dedicated to bringing fresh, safe water to the impoverished, rural areas of Ethiopia--and about what it takesto do that.  A few of the study group attendees came together to create a matching challenge fund of $6,000, to encourage others to make a commitment, over and above their normal gifts to the church, to provide clean water for those in need.   By the end of the six week study, Triumphant Love had over $20,000 in commitments.  By the time a check was presented, enough money had been raised for providing 12 fresh water wells.   The gifts of this one church forever changed the lives of over 6,000 Ethiopians!   And out of this experience, the “Water to Thrive” organization was begun, as a way of enabling others to take part in the godly, fulfilling work of providing “living water” for many more Africans. 

There’s a difference, isn’t there, between knowing what we can or should do to align our lives more with God’s work in the world, and actually doing it.  And, as John the Baptist pointed out, we really need to look beyond him—beyond his call for repentance, to one who came after him…to one who was more powerful than him.  We need to look to the One who ‘baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He is the One who, as John described him, has the means to sift through our lives and to sort out the wheat from the chaff.   If the direction of our lives is going to actually change…if we’re going to turn from the ways of wasteful, meaningless overkill to the way of compassion for the poor and powerless who are dear to God, then we need to look to the Lord Jesus Christ.  

Because, through our baptismal connection to him, we have some powerful, life-transforming promises.   Like the promise that God’s Holy Spirit will be at work in our hearts and our minds—and in thecommunity of the Spirit that we’re made part of through our baptism.   And there’s that wonderful promise of the forgiveness of sin.  As we live in the light of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ, we can remain close to God.  And remaining close to God over time, we can’t help but open ourselves to seeking God’s will for our lives.  That, I suspect, is what those adults at Triumphant Love Lutheran were doing when they took part in that six-week bible study that led them to engage in a life-changing well project.   And, it wasn’t just the lives of some Africans that were changed, right?   It was the lives of all those church members in Austin—and the lives of many more since them, who through the organization they formed, have found at least some of their attention and resources redirected from excessive pursuits to somemuch holier ones. 

The shape of repentance is, first and foremost, the shape of a cross—the cross of our savior Jesus Christ.   Some might say that, for God’s Son to come among us and willingly suffer and die on a crosswas overkill.  It was excessive!  But that’s what it takes…it’s what it takes to get us to trust that God loves us, in spite of our sins.  It’s what it takes to move us to a life empowered by the Spirit of God.  Thecross is what it takes to get us to that place where we will let our Lord sift out and burn away our senseless excesses.  The shape of repentance is a cross—because the cross is what leads us to the joyful fulfillment that comes with being part of God’s merciful work in the world. 

Text:  Mark 13:1-8

BRAIN SHIFTING

Have you noticed?  The entertainment industry seems fascinated with apocalyptic, or near-apocalyptic themes.  In last summer’s movie, called “Knowing,” a document turns up that, once it’s decoded, predicts the end of all human life.  It’s a prediction that’s believable to the main character, who’s played by Nicolas Cage, because all the other disaster predictions in the document come true.  Another upcoming movie, called “2012,” is premised on an ancient Mayan calendar prediction of global cataclysms that will supposedly bring an end to the world on a specific date in December of--you guessed it, the not-too-distant year of 2012.   Two current hit TV shows are based on weird, disturbing ideas.  One is the sudden appearance of an alien race with sinister plans; the other is a worldwide, two-minute blackout where everyone on earth gets a preview of what will supposedly happen to them at a certain time on a certain date, just a few months in the future.    We’re being inundated in a popular culture of fascination with the end of life as we know it.  And now today we read this gospel where the Lord Jesus is talking about things that have to do with the end.   Man!   As if there’s not enough to stir up our anxieties already, right?  I mean, talk about turning up the volume on our fears!   But, if you listen closely to Jesus, and if you read his words in context, they can and should have just the opposite effect.  As I read it, Jesus seems to be saying, “Yeah, a lot of really nasty stuff is coming.   There is an end to history as you know it, but it’s God’s end.  And God has it all under control.  So relax!” Jesus is saying.  “Don’t panic!   Any big, earth-moving stuff that you’re headed into is part of what’s got to happen in order for God’s final goal to be reached.”  It’s like when a woman gives birth, Jesus tells us.  It’s painful to go through, but that pain is a necessary part of the process.  So our Lord urges us to keep our head in the midst of all the disturbing stuff that happens…to trust in God…to focus on what’s on the other side of it all…and to have faith that, even if it looks like the end, there is something new and wonderful on the way!

In other words, “The end of life as we know it” isn’t a bad thing!   Whether we wind up facing some doomsday scenario, either from or supernatural causes, or from natural causes like human neglect or carelessness...or whether things just get even crazier and more messed up than they already are for the human race, we can count on God to ultimately triumph.  We can count on God to accomplish what’s good, for us and for all of God’s creation.   The bottom line for us Christians then, is that we face whatever causes us anxiety with faith…faith in God’s power and goodness, no matter what might befall us. 

What might such faith look like?   Well, I’d suppose it depends on what’s going on—with us or around us.   Not everybody’s reality is going to be the same, right?   It’s difficult for any of us to imagine what it must’ve been like for those at that processing center at Fort Hood when that gunman appeared and started to shoot people down.   Nobody knew what was happening!  Was it a single gunman run amuck, or a team of terrorists carrying out a carefully planned attack?  Either way, it would’ve made sense for anyone who was there to simply hit the deck and stay down, or else to run away and hide, as fast as possible.  Apparently, though, that’s not what everyone there did.  Some remained as the shooting continued, to administer first aid to the wounded and to comfort the dying. Do you suppose their anxiety was any less than those who just dove for cover, or who ran and hid?   I doubt it.   But obviously, some were able to master their anxiety and to look past their fear, to the needs of their fallen neighbors. 

Hopefully, you and I will never have to face such a horrible, real-life apocalypse.   Hopefully, we can live, safe and secure from random acts of violence, and from attacks by enemies of our nation.   There are, of course, no guarantees of that.  What’s more common though, is the non-violent but just-as-impersonal distress brought on by economic hard-times.   Hardship has hit many of us—perhaps even most of us, in a variety of different ways.   The terrible anguish of job loss and trying to find employment during a recession…the subtle-but-heavy, ongoing burden of those who still have jobs but who wonder if theirs might be the next to go…the dismay of watching retirement or college investments wane or disappear…the hard choices some must make--letting go of dreams and assets accumulated over a lifetime, swallowing pride to accept help we never imagined ourselves needing.  Some of us simply feel pressure to cut back, to hold onto what we’ve got for that rainy day that our gut tells us is pretty likely to come.   Whatever form our adversity takes, few of us are immune from the very human experience of anxious reactivity.  

Anxious reactivity.  It’s sometimes referred to as a “fight-or-flight” response.  And it’s really part of the way God wired us.  At the base of the human brain is the same structure that most members of the animal kingdom have…it’s often called the “reptilian brain.”   It’s the part of our mind that, when a big tree is about to fall on our head, or a charging moose or a truck or motorcycle is about to plow us over, is what moves us to get quickly out of the way.  If a bear has hold of us and is about to tear us to pieces, or if somebody is threatening the safety of our child, this part of our brain gets us to take a stand and fight back.  The thing about this part of our brain is that it tends not to distinguish between imminent threats and, well, less imminent ones.   Fortunately, we humans have something that separates us from other animals…it’s called a cerebral cortex.  It’s the part of our brain that enables creativity and rational thought.  And if we let it, our cerebral cortex can overrule our lower-brain reactivity, whenever the situation warrants it.   So, unlike snakes or birds or other animals, we don’t have to operate on that fight-or-flight basis.   We don’t have to anxiously react to every fear-inducing thing that happens.  At Fort Hood, there were some who demonstrated this ability, very well.  

The Lord Jesus doesn’t pull any punches; he doesn’t try to shelter us from the fact that we are in for some fear-inducing, even hair-raising events—including some pretty big ones, like wars and earthquakes.   Events that some will even use, he says, to make wild and self-serving claims, claims that will lead many astray.  But to us, his followers, the Lord Jesus says, “Do not be led astray,”…“Do not be alarmed”…“Trust in God.” 

O-o-okayyy…but sometimes that’s a lot easier said than done!  When fearful things are happening—around us and to us, it sets off those reptilian alarm bells in our lower brains.   And when those bells start to ring, how are we supposed to “not be alarmed?”  How do we go about trusting in God’s power and goodness, when our insides are screaming “Take cover!” or “Fight back!”?  How do we silence the alarm bells and keep our head?  How can we focus on Jesus’ promise that these are just birth pangs…that somehow, through it all, something wonderful is going to be born?  

If only we could all become teenagers.  Most teenagers I know have somehow managed to turn off that part of their brain that sounds the alarm.  It’s like, they go screeching around corners up on two wheels and they don’t even flinch.  The big test is tomorrow and you haven’t studied at all?  No biggy…it’s just a test.  Cliff diving?  Bungy jumping off a bridge? Hanging out with those people who my parents would freak out about?   Sounds like fun!  Too bad we can’t all become teenagers.  Teenagers are always so cool, about everything.  Nothing can make them even break a sweat.  Okay, maybe there is one thing; the one thing I’ve seen that can make a teenager scream is if you tell them you’re blocking texting on their cell phone.  “A-a-a-ah!!!”

On second thought, perhaps just becoming teenagers won‘t make us as calm as we need to be.  So, I’d like to suggest that those Marks of Disciplelife we recite every Sunday at the end of our worship service can come in real handy for silencing those inner alarm bells, once they start clanging away.  Praying daily, worshipping weekly, and studying the Bible…these are acts that can keep us rooted in our relationship with the gracious God who reveals himself to us in Christ—a relationship that’s been granted to us in our baptism.  These faith-nurturing activities of prayer, worship and Bible study are essential for engaging our hearts and minds with the One who, with a cross and an empty tomb, has proved himself to be worthy of our trust.  These Marks of Disciplelife can really help us out!  “Serving others,” as so many have found, is an excellent way to quiet an anxious spirit.  It’s hard to focus on the needs of another and, at the same time be all caught up in our own inner noise.  Serving others takes us outside of our selves. “Building spiritual friendships”?  Spiritual friendship can keep us accountable.  Hopefully, a spiritual friend is somebody who can be honest with you.  It’s someone who you can run things by, and if needed, they can say, “Hey, you need to chill—you’re getting carried away here!”  “Giving to God and our neighbors in need”… well, that pretty much requires that we put that anxious part of ourself on hold; faithful and generous giving comes out of a grateful and trusting heart.  You can’t do it if you’re operating out of fear.    And, what better way is there to look toward God‘s promised future than to welcome and help usher it in by consciously “Engaging God’s mission”?  

Beyond these Marks of Disciplelife, though, there are probably some other things we can do, that lend themselves to functioning on a spiritually higher plane than that reptilian, fight-or-flight response allows.   One such thing might be to avoid those voices that’ve become so prevalent in the media.  I’d bet we’re all very familiar with these vocies.  We can tune off or turn off those personalities who are determined to stir up all kinds of fear, and anxiety, and reactivity.   In this respect, we do have plenty of choices these days, don’t we?  We can watch or listen to or read the writings of people who make us feel fearful and angry…or, we can stimulate our imagination with a good book or a wholesome, thoughtful show, or by doing a word puzzle.  We can listen to those who want to interpret for us what’s going on in the world around us, or we can study the facts from a variety of sources and think things through for ourselves.  

As the Lord Jesus spelled out for us, we’re going to hear about and even experience all kinds of upsetting events.  But he also assured us that it’s all part of what it’s gonna take to get us to that place where God is taking us.  The challenge for us is to not be led astray.  If we find ourselves getting worked up about things, that’s probably a sign—a sign that it’s time to step back and do whatever’s needed to shift our thinking to a different part of our brain…to that part that lets us trust that, no matter how things might look or feel, God has it all well in hand.  

Text:  Mark 12:38-44

THE MATH PROBLEM

Anybody here good at math?  Here’s a word problem for you.   It’s on page __ of the Trumpet notes, if it helps to see it.  Tim makes $70,000 a year and he works 50 hours a week.  Audrey is retired and lives on a fixed income of $33,000 a year.   Audrey serves at her church an average of 2 hours a week, and she gives $3,300 to support her church’s mission.  Tim serves at his church an average of 1.5 hours a week, and he gives $4000 in support of his church’s mission.   Who gives more to their church, Tim or Audrey?

The answer is…both of them!   Audrey gives more of her money, while Tim gives more of his time.    Okay, I know what some of you are thinking:  “Yeah, Pastor John, I can see why you got a seminary degree and not an MBA.”   Fact is, I really did stink at math in school.  My kids know not to even bother asking me for help with their math homework.  Come to think of it, one of my kid’s teachers said that, the way they teach math today is so different from the way we adults learned it that we shouldn’t even try to help them.   But the math we’re using to solve this word problem this morning isn’t the math I stunk at in school.  It’s not even the “new” kind of math our kids these days learn.  This math is God’s math.  God, you see, has a whole different standard when it comes to adding up what we give.   By the world’s standard, it’s a simple matter of quantity.  By the world’s standard, Tim gives a higher dollar figure than Audrey, and so Tim gives more.   But, according to the math lesson Jesus gives us in today’s gospel, God doesn’t figure things that way.   For God, it’s not a matter of mere quantity…it’s a matter of proportion.  In God’s economy, you measure what’s given in proportion to what one has to give.  Audrey has way more time on her hands to serve at her church than Tim does; but since Tim serves almost as many minutes as Audrey, by God’s math, Tim actually serves more.  It’s what Tim gives in proportion to what he has to give that adds up, when you’re using the divine math model.    I want to invite you today to reflect with me on some of the implications of using God’s standard instead of our own.  

Let’s start by voicing some questions that could arise in our minds as we’re about to offer our giving intents and make ourselves available to serve at Rejoice for the coming year.  “What good,” we might ask, “can whatever money I can manage to give to my church do, in the face of all the need out there in our world?     What good can a few hours of service to my church do, in the face of all the need out there?”

There are a number of ways to answer these questions.  One way would be to use Jesus’ approach to math cynically and say, “It’s not gonna do much good at all.  After all, if you compare the proportion of what we give to the proportion of need, any amount we give looks totally insubstantial.”  That’s the smart-aleck answer.  Another way to answer, though, can be summed up by a cartoon I once saw.  In this cartoon, there’s this vast sea of human faces; over each one of these faces is a thought balloon.  And inside each of those thought balloons is the exact same thought:   “What can one man do?”  a sea of people, all thinking the same thing—“what can one man do?”  The answer is clear…together, we could do a whole lot, if only we weren’t limiting ourselves by that question.  Just imagine what we could do if only we were all doing whatever we can.

Still another way to answer such questions is to frame them in terms of what good our giving and service for God does once God makes use of them.  “What good can a few loaves and fish do to feed so many people?,” Jesus’ disciples once asked.  What do you suppose they did with those twelve basketsful left over they collected after Jesus was through using those few loaves and fish to feed five thousand people?  “What good can one man’s death do, in the face of all the need in our world?”  I don’t know, why don’t you ask the innumerable believers who’ve enjoyed a saving relationship with God through the cross of Christ—a relationship that’s sustained them in the face of life’s hardships and burdens and even in the face of death?  A relationship that’s resulted in Christians working together to create immense movements and an abundance of  organizations and institutions that provide food and medical care and social services and development and education--and that make life bearable and even rich and meaningful for countless people?

“I am the vine, you are the branches,” our Lord Jesus said, “If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.  Apart from me, you can do nothing.”  I’d propose that what good anything we do is, ultimately, is up to God.  What good anything we do is, ultimately, is up to God.  I’d also propose that, in our giving, you and I are simply called to trust—to trust that our gifts, whatever they may be, in conjunction with God’s blessing and partnership, can and will achieve great things.   In fact, faith, or trust in God, that accompanies our giving, seems to be a major factor--for God.  I mean, the poor widow in today’s gospel, Jesus said, “put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”  Think about it!  That took a whole lot of trust on the part of that poor widow, didn’t it?  Way more trust than those were wealthy and who “put in large sums.”  Apparently, it’s not just the gift that’s offered that’s important to God…it’s the heart of the giver.  The heart of the giver.

The dollar figure you put down to give to Rejoice in 2010 is between you, God and our financial secretary.  But the real value of that amount is between you and God alone.   The Opportunities to Serve at Rejoice that you’re making yourself available for in 2010 will be known by you and whatever of our leaders need help in those areas.   But you and God alone know the real value of the ways you’ve said you’ll be available to serve.  God’s not looking just at the amount of money or the number of hours we’ve said we’re willing to give; God’s looking at our heart. 

God’s math as Jesus teaches it to us is different than the math we’re used to.  But it’s not really that difficult to understand…if I can get it, anyone can.  But it could be that our real problem isn’t that we don’t get God’s math.  The Lord Jesus also teaches us that the greatest commandment is that we should “love the Lord our God”, first “with all our heart” and then “with all of our mind and all of our strength.”  Our real problem might just be that none of us keep this commandment; we fail to love God with all of our heart… and so we don’t love him with all our mind and our strength…the end result being that we don’t give God all that we have to give.  But then, isn’t that why Jesus gave his body and shed his for us?--to assure us of God’s abiding love even when we fail…and to call us into a new relationship with God, one based not on obeying commandments, but based on gratitude and trust?  To me, what that adds up to is this simple question: in view of what Christ has given us, are we ready now to give God our heart?

Text:  Romans 3:19-28

WHO KNEW?

Who knew that split ends could be so useful?  Researchers recently discovered that Gecko lizards are able to rapidly run up walls and even ceilings because they have these very tiny hairs on their toes.  Each tiny hair, it turns out, has a lot of split ends on it.  And the split ends are so small, they actually get into the spaces between molecules.  It’s in this way—with the split ends on the tiny hairs on its toes that, in a split second, a Gecko lizard can run all the way up a wall and right onto the ceiling!  Who knew that spilt ends could be so useful? 

Who knew that a cross could be so useful?    For centuries after giving his laws to his chosen people of Israel, God watched, heartbroken, as time and time again, they turned away from him and strayed into destructive paths of injustice and evil.   It seems God’s commandments, as numerous as they were, and as great as they seemed to be for pointing out what the people ought to do and needed to do, could not inspire in people the means or the ability to do those things.   Then, after many generations, when his peoples’ whole society had totally collapsed, God finally made known his real plan for bringing people into a right relationship with him and with one another.  God’s real plan all along, it turns out, was based on something completely different from those laws; it was based on his promise of grace, mercy and forgiveness…grace, mercy and forgiveness that would come through, of all things, a cross.   Who knew?

On Reformation Sunday, we celebrate and proclaim the centrality and importance—not of what we have done, but of what God has done for us, through the cross of Christ.  We don’t sing hymns with words like, “We’re so good, we’re going to heaven.”   No, we sing songs about what “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”   It’s not, “Amazing us, ain’t it just great, that we’re so obedient and righteous...”   No, the whole point of the Lutheran Reformation was that, what we are unable to do for ourselves, God has done for us in Jesus Christ, when he suffered and died for us…on a cross.  Our Lutheran identity is founded on the teaching that what makes us right with God and with one another is the unearned favor that God freely gives us, by declaring us to be righteous, not because of anything we do, but for Christ’s sake.  And yet, how many Christians—even Lutheran Christians, get caught up focusing on the laws or commands of God in the Bible…using them as a standard, either for themselves to live up to, or for others to live up to…acting as if adhering to certain do’s and don’t in the Bible are somehow necessary for a person to be considered good and faithful and worthy? 

Let’s go back to where we got all those laws and commandments in the Bible.  The people of Israel have had God’s commandments for thousands of years…long before there was a Bible.  And yet, they couldn’t manage to keep those laws and commandments. Instead, as we read about it--in the Bible, they repeatedly broke God’s laws.

The problem?   It wasn’t God’s laws.  No, the problem was something fundamentally broken in the people who were supposed keep those laws.  The Israelite, or Jew who we now call the apostle Paul, was originally a member of a Jewish sect called the Pharisees.  As a Pharisee, Paul devoted himself to keeping and upholding God’s law; he even persecuted those who worshipped Jesus as the son of God as law-breakers.  Then one day, Paul himself encountered the risen Jesus.   And so Paul became a Christian believer and the premier teacher, theologian and missionary of the early Christian church.  In his New Testament letter to the Romans, Paul wrote these words:

^…I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.  I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Does that sound familiar to anyone here?   It should…it’s a great description of the experience we all have.  It describes this species-wide condition we all have, called sin.    And that’s what Paul called it; “sin within me,” were his precise words for this situation he describes in Romans.  

Sin within us is exactly where the problem lies.  Because of this human condition called sin, keeping God’s law is simply impossible.  Boy, that sure explains the history of the people of Israel, doesn’t it?  Being human, just like us, they couldn’t keep God’s laws.  If anyone here has any doubts about that…if you believe that you can manage to present yourself as righteous before God on the basis of keeping the commandments… well, good luck!  

We’re welcome to try and fail at obeying God’s commands all that we’d like.  But the thing is, it’s simply not necessary.  Because, us trying to keep God’s laws isn’t God’s plan.   The Bible clearly spells out that God has established another way for us to gain a right standing with him.  This way was lifted up first long ago by the prophet Jeremiah:

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant... It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke…. this is the covenant that I will make…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

A new covenant, based not on our keeping God’s law, but one based on God forgiving our sin.   A covenant that will enable God to reshape our hearts and our lives, so that we can truly come to live as God’s people in the world.   How does this happen?  Again, in Romans, the apostle Paul spells it out for us:

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed…through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe.

As we have faith in, or as we put our trust in Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, Paul tells us, God’s righteousness becomes our righteousness.   God knows the bind we’re in—how sin has such a hold on us that we can’t keep his laws.   And so, through the cross, God has mercifully done for us, what none of us are able to do for ourselves.  “For there is no distinction,” Paul writes, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”

Justified, declared righteous, by God’s grace, as a gift…through Jesus Christ.   We can’t keep God’s laws to become righteous, but we don’t have to, since, on the cross, God has done what’s needed to make us righteous.   Pretty great news, eh?  So… how come so many Christians still get hung up on God’s laws, on those do’s and don’ts we find throughout the Bible? Do God’s laws still have a role to play?

For our favorite theologian, Martin Luther, the answer was…yes.   Surprised?  It’s true!  Luther said that, while we can in no way become righteous by trying to keep the law of God, the law still functions for us like a mirror; we stand before God’s laws, and we find reflected back to us our brokenness--our need for Christ and his cross.   The law is still useful…for driving us to faith in the cross of Christ.  Beyond that, Luther said, the law can also help us determine what it takes to have a good life together here on earth.   Of course, sometimes Luther found it necessary to reinterpret God’s laws—as we do, too. 

The law of God, you see, isn’t just in the bible.  It’s built into the fabric of the universe.   It’s woven all through our lives and our experience.   It’s like the law of gravity...it’s simply there, affecting us--all the time.  And just like the law of gravity, changes in human understanding and experience can change how we express or relate with God’s law.  Science and technology changed the way gravity operates on us and limits us.  Humans used to be convinced that human flight was impossible… “If God meant us to fly,” people used to say, “he’d have given us wings.”   Now, having traveled to the moon, we don’t find gravity limiting us in the same ways.  In a similar way, other changes can affect the way we’re limited by the laws of God that operate in our lives.

Let’s take the 10 commandments.   We can see that some of the ten clearly still apply, just as they were written, long ago.   I think most of us would agree, for instance, that bearing false witness against our neighbors violates the trust we need to live together.   “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”?  Yeah, we need, more than ever, to take regular time to rest, and to hear God’s Word.  Of course, the way we live with that commandment has changed a lot over the last 40-50 years.   People didn’t used to do business on Sundays; now we buy and sell without thinking much about it. Very few will say that adultery is a good thing; most understand that marriage is a major building block of a good society; for most people I know, anything that threatens or undermines a marriage relationship—as adultery surely does, is seen as bad.   “Honor your father and your mother”?   We all need to learn to live with authority.  And I’m sure we’d all agree that the main way kids learn that is by learning to live with the authority of their parents.   But what about that commandment that goes “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his ox, or his servants…”?  Ancient peoples viewed and treated women as the property of men. Slavery and indentured service were widely accepted and practiced in the ancient world.  Today, well, at least in our part of the world, it’s not considered acceptable to treat women as property, or legal to own people.   So, perhaps we need to express anew how God’s law is operating on us.   Maybe something like, “Don’t plot to steal another company’s employees”?  Or, maybe, “Don’t scheme in ways that put other peoples assets at risk”?  Even if we know we and others are going to make the wrong choices at times, we still need to figure out what our limits are, don’t we? If we don’t, there’s a very earthly price to be paid! 

We live in anxious times, when so much is changing in the world.  In the face of all that change, some want black and white answers to what are often today some pretty complex issues.  “My Bible says such and such, and that’s how it is!”, you’ll hear some folks say. I always want to ask such folks why that one thing their Bible says is so important, while so many other things in there, they can just ignore.  I mean, my Bible says, in Leviticus 20:9--and again in Exodus 21:17, that, “All who curse father or mother shall be put to death.”  Would you really feel bound, if your child who was so disrespectful as to curse you, to put them to death?  Or would you perhaps take away their car keys, or ground them from screens for a week or a month, or make them start doing their own laundry?   (To my kids, that’d be, like, a fate worse than death!)  My Bible says, in Leviticus 19, “The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you….” So, is everyone ready to grant undocumented immigrants all the same rights and privileges that all American citizens have?   After all, my Bible is your Bible, and it says you should.

Or…as baptized Christians, are we not bound to the law as it’s expressed in various parts of the Bible?   Well, let’s check out what the Bible itself says.  This very question came up, you see, for the early church in Jerusalem.   Some in the church wanted to make Gentile converts get circumcised (ouch!)--as a sign of their devotion to keeping the laws of Moses.  But, as the apostle Peter put it, “Why are you… placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will."  The apostle Paul had to address this same issue in church after church that he’d founded, where these false teachers kept turning up after he’d left.  These teachers were persuading people to focus on trying to keep God’s law instead of trusting in Christ and his cross.  To the church in Galatia, Paul wrote,

“Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?”

It’s a rhetorical question; the answer is obvious. The Galatians received a place among God’s people because they believed Paul’s message of Christ crucified.

Trusting God’s grace through the cross of Christ isn’t just what makes us right with God; it’s our way of life.   When we trust in the cleansing promise of forgiveness that comes to us through the cross, we receive another gift from God: a share of God’s Spirit—the Spirit of Christ.  As we live by faith in the cross, this Spirit of Christ works, within us and among us, leading us and empowering us, so that we can live a much more wholesome life together than we’d otherwise have.  And so the world can experience through us some ongoing measure of God’s love and mercy.    It’s in this way that God fulfills what he promised so long ago:  to write his law in our hearts.  

As people who stand on the cross of Christ, we’re not bound to the law as it’s expressed in the Scriptures.  Oh, we can turn to the Bible as a starting place, whenever we need to figure out how best to live in our time and place.  But we do so with this understanding:  the law of God, the do’s and don’ts we find in the Bible is not our way of life.  The cross—and following the One who bore the cross, is our way of life. 

Who would have thought that a cross could be so useful?

Text:  Mark 10:35-45

TAKE MY LIFE AND…

If you’re not a person who has a genuine Christian faith, you can just tune out today’s sermon.  Go ahead…put in your earplugs and turn on your i-pod, right now.  Because it’s Stewardship season in the church…it’s that time when we consider how we’re called to manage the gifts that God has entrusted to us.   It’s that time when we all ask, “What, on a practical level, does good stewardship mean for me?” That question really isn’t for people who don’t believe.  It’s for authentic Christian believers with grateful hearts.  Good stewardship, you see, is the response of somebody who truly believes that, in Christ, God has done some amazingly great things for us—things that call for us to do some pretty great things for God.

Of course, if you don’t believe that, then we might well ask, “What are you doing here?   Why are you hanging around the church?”  Is it just because you think it’s got something to offer your kids, or your spouse, and so you just come along for the ride?  If Jesus didn’t suffer and die on the cross for you, it seems like there’s a lot of other things you could be doing with your time on Sunday mornings.   After all, the puppet shows and other children’s messages are usually kinda fun, and the coffee and the company are good, but they’re not that compelling, are they?  I mean, wouldn’t you rather be home reading the funnies, or the sports section?

On the other hand, if you do believe that, to prove the depths of his love for us, God became one of us and offered his body and blood for us on the cross, for the forgiveness of our sins, well, then, it’s Stewardship time!   Listen up! 

Stewardship time rolls around this time every year because, well, first of all, good stewardship doesn’t happen in general.  We show our gratitude to God through good stewardship by managing specific resources that’ve been entrusted to us—by our willingness to give a certain amount of our time, our talent and our treasure, in ways that serve God.  

“Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord to thee.”   If you’ve grown up in the church, you’ve likely heard or sung that hymn pretty much every single year, at least once or twice a year.  And yet, if you look at how some of us behave, we might well be singing, “Take my life and leave me be.”  With the pace of life these days being what it is, I’m sure there’s times we’d all like to say that.  I know there’s times I would.  “Okay, Lord, I believe in you.  You’ve granted me life, forgiveness and eternal salvation; I believe that, when I die, I’m goin’ to heaven...Thanks a lot, Lord!  Now, how about we just leave it at that?” “Take my life and leave me be.”

Last week on behalf of the Stewardship Team, Don Hays asked us all to start to prayerfully consider how God is calling us to financially support Rejoice in carrying out its mission and ministry for 2010.   This week we’ll all be asked to start to prayerfully consider how we’ll be available to serve at Rejoice in the coming year.   It’s necessary for us to do this…because, as I’ve already said, good stewardship isn’t in general—it’s specific.  And it’s also necessary because, well, I’ll lay out this next reason in the form of a story.

Olive and her husband Jack were driving home from a dinner party one evening, when, out of the blue, Olive said in a thoughtful tone, “You know, Jack, if it weren’t for my money, we wouldn’t be driving this nice car.”   Jack looked at her, but he said nothing.  They pulled up to their house, and Olive said, “You know Jack, if it weren’t for my money, we wouldn’t be living in this nice home.”  Jack said nothing in response.  They went inside and, on their way to the stairs, they passed by the living room, filled with elegant furniture that they’d accumulated over the past few years.  Olive paused and said, “Jack, if it weren’t for my money, we wouldn’t have this nice living room set.”  Jack silently headed for the stairs.  They got into their nightclothes, pulled back the covers and climbed into bed together.  Before reaching for the lamp, Olive said, “And you know, Jack, if it weren’t for my money, we wouldn’t have this nice bed.”  That’s when Jack looked at his wife and said, “Yes…and you know Olive, if it weren’t for your money, I wouldn’t be here either!”

So what’s the point?   It’s simple!  If it weren’t for your money, I wouldn’t be here.   If it weren’t for the faithful, committed service of many of you, I wouldn’t be here. Neither, I suspect, would any of the staff at Rejoice—not on the level we are now.   Without your partnership in ministry, we’d have to work elsewhere so we can help pay our household bills.  Even if that weren’t the case, without the vast amount of service so many of you give, your staff would be quickly overwhelmed, and we’d burn right out.  Without the faithful, good stewardship of a lot of households at Rejoice, stewardship of both wealth and of time and talents, we wouldn’t have Rejoice Lutheran Church!  

We do a stewardship emphasis once a year because the continued mission and ministry of Rejoice depends on you.  We at Rejoice share a vision for going where we’re convinced God is calling us to go in the coming years.   That vision includes far more than just maintaining a building and keeping up our property.   At the heart of our vision is that we continue to strengthen and expand our youth and children’s ministries.   We’ve had Brandon on board as our part-time youth minister for about 7 months now; his focus has been on building relationships and connections with and among our Junior and Senior High youth—and he’s been learning how to work with our team of adult youth leaders in planning and making youth events happen.  But even before we brought Brandon on staff, we saw our youth ministry grow in leaps and bounds…from just a couple of high school youth three years ago, to 14 of them who went to the National Youth Gathering this summer.  We’ve seen our confirmation ministry grow from 7 last year to 15 students this year. I can tell you straight out that this growth has taken place, not because of me or Brandon or any paid staff; it’s happened because for the past few years now we’ve had a number of “triple A adults” who care and who’ve been willing to do what it takes to make it happen.   One result of all this growth in our youth ministry is that we’re now seeing some pretty stretched and stressed adult youth leaders.  They’ve been asking for more logistical and organizational support from staff and so we plan, in the coming year, to add a part-time youth, children’s and educational ministries director.  In the not-too distant future, we want to grow both this new position and Brandon’s position toward full time; for now though, we’re definitely seeing the need to keep Brandon and to add this second part-time, administrative youth staff position.  And this is in addition to adding more funds to subsidize our young people as they go to church camp, retreats, synod events and a Mission trip, so they won’t have to do endless fundraising in order to attend.

Between our fixed expenses and what it’ll cost to resource this vision of expanding and strengthening our youth and children’s ministries, we’re looking at a significant increase in our budget next year.  The momentum of our vision is really rolling now…we have three youth groups, a thriving confirmation ministry, and we’re also looking to add an after-school care program for middle school students.  But I can tell you this… if we’re going to keep the ball rolling, we’re going to need more than a nice new facility, some part-time youth staff and some money to help pay for youth events.  We’re going to need plenty more adults to step up and offer to support these ministries, with their time and their abilities—and the same is true for all of our ministries.

Our church council has a chart of all the major roles and responsibilities at Rejoice.  Every month they check this chart to see who it’s time to approach and ask, “Are you ready to commit to doing more of this, or is it time for you to step down now and find some other way to serve?”  It’s a sensible way we have at Rejoice to prevent burnout.  Even if they want to continue to serve, people seem to appreciate being asked whether they want to….and not just have it taken for granted that they will.   As you might imagine, our list of major roles and responsibilities is a long one.  What might not occur to you is that many of the commitments to serve folks have made are about to end, and we’re seeing some who’ve been serving in these roles for quite some time tell us that they’re ready now to step down.  That means the council is going to be looking for somebody to step up…in fact, lots of somebodies!

It also means this:  if not for your commitments to offer your time and talents in the coming year, we won’t continue to offer some of our ministries…and other ministries will struggle.   I’m glad we seem to have a number of folks who are willing to mow and to clean; that’s part of our life now; we’ll always need folks to do these things.  What we really need right now, though, is for lots of folks to serve in other ways…we need people to coordinate, people to plan, people to take responsibility for making events happen.  And we need a whole slough of other folks to help and serve with those who do coordinate, plan and take responsibility for making things happen. 

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you never hear me talk about needing “volunteers” at Rejoice.  Volunteers, as I see it, are people who, if they have some leftover time and energy to give to some cause they consider worthy, they’ll do it.   And if they don’t have leftover time an energy, they won’t.  I’m convinced that, as baptized people, you and I are not volunteers.   We are God’s people--people redeemed by Christ, and connected, through baptism, to Christ…so that we can do great things together.  We are the body of Christ, and each of us has been given gifts to use in the service of Christ our head.  Many of us who’ve grown up in the church were taught that one of the basics of good and faithful stewardship is giving God our “first-fruits.”   Usually we talk about “first-fruits giving” in terms of first dedicating a portion of our wealth to God through his church, and then planning how we’ll use the remaining portion of our wealth for our own needs. The idea is that we acknowledge, trust and appreciate God by giving our best to him first.   I want to suggest that first-fruit giving should apply to our time and talents as well.  That is, it’s not that we commit our time elsewhere and then, with what time and energy we have left over, we give it to the church.  I mean, think about it!  Any church…any organization, that operates that way, on the basis of peoples’ leftovers, is doomed!  Especially today, when there are endless ways we can use our time.  No, we are people for whom God has done great things through his beloved Son Jesus.  We are also then, people who are called to gratefully respond to what God has done for us in Christ, by dedicating our lives to following Jesus, by doing great things together.  And, as our Lord Jesus puts it in our gospel today: greatness among us, his followers, is defined in a certain way.  “Whoever wants to be great among you,” Jesus says, “must be what...a volunteer?”  No!  “…Your servant.” Your servant. Our Lord Jesus defined greatness as service in and among the Christian community.

I’m proposing today that the kind of greatness through service our Lord calls us to isn’t the result of “volunteers” who give whatever leftover time and energy they have to “help out around the church.”  As you consider your commitments for the coming year, I’m urging you to consider two things.  First, consider what abilities and time and energy you can set aside and offer that will really help to move Rejoice forward in engaging God’s mission.   And second, consider this: that bread and wine we receive during holy communion isn’t just bread and wine, right?  It’s body and blood…given and shed for us. “For the son of man came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Our Lord Jesus Christ offered his best…he gave his all, for us.   How will you show him your thanks?  By giving him your leftovers?  By doing the minimum you can get by with and still show your face around here?   Or will you offer your gifts and abilities to serve, as baptized members of the body of Christ?

Text:  Mark 10:17-31

YEARNING FOR MORE?  GOD’S ANSWER

"Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…then come, follow me."    “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."   With these two statements in our gospel today, the Lord Jesus shocked a wealthy religious man and his own followers.   Perhaps we should be shocked as well.  After all, even the less prosperous of us are among the top 25% wealthiest people in the world.   We live in a society that’s largely built on the premise that accumulating more wealth is a good thing, and that the truly blessed people in this world are those who are very rich.   Much of our way of life is founded on an economic system that depends on the willingness and ability of more and more people to be wealthy, so they can consume more and more goods and services.  Through credit and through advertising, we’re led to spend money we don’t have, on stuff we often don’t need and would be better off without.  Over the past year, we’ve seen how the relentless pursuit of wealth can carry us to disaster--of a proportion that we and our children are all likely to be paying for for a long, long time.   We all know people whose jobs have been eliminated as a result of the downturn that’s accompanied this disaster.  Some of them are among us.  And yet many of us continue down the same paths, our deeply ingrained habits of spending and borrowing maybe curtailed a little bit… but overall, we still pretty much just keep on buying, buying , buying.  The idea of divesting ourselves of our wealth and redistributing it to the poor--so that we can be free to follow Jesus?  No…I suspect most of us would walk away from that one.  Even to acknowledge that our patterns of consumption greatly interfere with our ability to truly serve God and our neighbors…again, good luck with that.   Such is the hold that our standard of living has on us. 

Gulf Coast Synod Bishop Mike Rinehart tells the story of going on a mission trip to Peru.  He was sitting on the plane, he said, en route to the first stop in Mexico City, and he was squeezed in next to this huge “biker-looking fellow.”  They were seated so close that he knew he’d have to strike up some kind of conversation.  But he couldn’t imagine what he might have to talk about with a fellow like this. So, he decided to just start with most obvious question.  “So,” Bishop Mike asked, “where are you going?”  “Oh, my buddy and I just made a pile o’ money drivin’ trucks,” the bug guy answered, “so we’re goin’ down to the beach to git drunk and pick us up some women.  How ‘bout you?  Where you goin’?”  Bishop Mike responded, “Oh, me and 10 other folks are going to do a vacation bible school for these children down in Peru. Peru,” he explained, “is one of the poorest countries in the world; most people don’t make hardly any money at all, so we’re going to put on this Bible School for these kids in Lima, and we know they’ll really appreciate it, a lot.” The biker-looking fellow was looking at him like he was from Mars.   “We actually pay to do this,” the bishop continued, “but we get so much more out of it than any of the kids we’re going to serve.”   The conversation kind of died after that.  A while later, when the plane had landed in Mexico, the bishop got up to leave.  But his seat-mate reached out and caught him by the arm.  He dug into his pocket, pulled out a wad of cash and started to peel off twenties, one after another.  He took a pile of twenties, put them in the bishop’s hand, and said, “You take this, and use it to help those poor kids now, won’t you?”

Bishop Mike says he learned two things from this experience…one is that you never know when or where you’re going to make disciples…it can happen at any place or any time, and it may not be anywhere around a church.  The other thing he learned is that, “When God touches your heart, he also touches your wallet.”

In the Lord Jesus Christ, God has come to touch our hearts—and to claim our hearts…along with all that we are and all that we have.   The wealthy man in our gospel asserted that he’d kept all the commandments…and yet, he still sensed that something was missing.  “Good teacher, “ he said to Jesus, “What should I do?” Maybe we see ourselves as upstanding moral people, people who do our share to earn what we have…and yet we still find an emptiness inside of us.   Perhaps our spirits cry out to be saved. No matter how many trips we might make to Wal Mart, or to the Mall, or to the movie theater or the Carribean or Las Vegas—perhaps we’re still left asking what we must do to be delivered from the shallowness of our existence.

Now, let’s be clear.  The question for us isn’t, “What must we do to inherit eternal life, or to assure ourself of being right with God?” There is nothing we can do to earn our way into heaven, or into a right relationship with God.  But what’s impossible for us, is possible for God. In fact,  God has already done for us in the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus!  We can’t do anything to inherit eternal life.  And, we don’t need to do anything.  Eternal life is ours…it’s a free gift from our heavenly father through his beloved son Jesus.  The issue for us now is, what can we do to be saved from living a pointless life on this side of the grave?”  Through Christ we have the assurance of a place in heaven after we die; what we ned is to be saved from an empty existence here on earth.  And, here in his church, our Lord Jesus Christ has given us an answer to that question.    The bumper-sticker phrase for that answer as we in the church have come to talk about it, is “Good Stewardship.” 

Good Stewardship.  As we understand it, God created us, and Christ redeemed us, to be good stewards--good caretakers, or managers, of all the gifts that God has entrusted to us.   The biblical stories of creation portray God making human beings to “have dominion”—to rule over on his behalf, all of earth’s living things, and to “till and keep” God’s garden.  Our purpose in this world is to be good stewards of all the gifts of his creation, and that includes not just the plants and animals and birds and other people, along with the water and air and soil necessary to sustain life, but also our own bodies and minds, and their well-being.  God calls us to be good stewards of all of our various abilities.  As part of this, God in Christ specifically calls us tomanage our money and possessions in ways that serve God and that benefit others-- that our money and possessions don’t end up managing us.   

The Good news is that, as with our eternal salvation, we’re not left to do ourselves.  Our Lord doesn’t just give us this task of stewardship and then cut us loose, saying, “Okay, you’re on your own…you’d better get it right!”  No…as a matter of fact, in calling us to be good stewards, God also calls us to seek his help.   Because, God knows that, left on our own, we’re bound to be influenced primarily by the powerful appeal of our spiritually warped world.   And so, especially when it comes to managing our wealth, the Lord expects us to seek his wisdom and guidance.   Annually here at Rejoice, as in many Christian communities, we provide an opportunity for everyone to be intentional about this.   At this time of year, we’re all urged to get into that place where we can listen for God’s voice, prayerfully seeking how we will give in the coming year, to God and to our neighbors in need.    In this way, at least once a year, we all have the chance to shake loose from the ways our wealth has come to mange us, by letting God touch both our hearts and our wallets.

Some find the ancient and traditional practice of tithing, or giving ten percent of our income to God, to be a helpful guide to determining how much God is calling us to give.  That’s a pretty straightforward, mathematical approach.  Others, though, in prayerfully seeking how they’re called to be good stewards, find fulfillment in adding gifts to their tithe; some even give significantly more than ten percent.  There are, of course, others who don’t feel able to give anywhere near as much as ten percent, usually due to a fixed or limited income.   Still others may not feel called or able to give anything at all, and so they look for other ways to be good stewards.  What I want to suggest this morning, though, is that all of us are called to come to God and, in the light of his generous and abundant grace that’s been given to us in Christ, to prayerfully seek the answer to the question, “What does good stewardship entail for me?”  

Our yearning for more in life can and should lead us to ask that question.  But ultimately, I’m convinced that a truly faithful answer to the question of how we are called to be good stewards doesn’t come from that yearning…or from anything else inside of us.  Ultimately, the answer to what we can and should give to God comes when, through Christ, God touches our hearts.   In the end, fulfilling, faithful, good stewardship arises from a deep and abiding awareness of what, in the cross of Christ,  God has given to us. 

Text:  Mark 10:2-6

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY: BUILDING BLOCKS

Having officiated at quite a few weddings, I can’t help but observe that there’s always something amusing that takes place at a wedding.  There was the time the bride made it all the way through the lakeside ceremony at a state park…and as soon as the service ended, she promptly grabbed hold of the top of her dress and started bouncing up and down, shaking the whole dress.  It seems that, somewhere early on in the service, a bug had started crawling around in there, and she’d been dying the whole time to shake it out.   Then there was the time at another lakeside wedding when a whole flock of birds came to rest in a hedge right behind me, and those blessed little critters just sang their hearts out for about half the service, so that the bride and groom and I had to shout to hear each other. Indoor weddings don’t fare any better.  I’ve seen a bridesmaid step on the bride’s dress…a groomsman who keeled over because of too much alcohol the night before…a ring-bearer with his finger up his nose…a pair of mothers who got into a tussle about what they were supposed to do--even though they’d rehearsed it together repeatedly.  At the rehearsals, I always tell everybody to expect something silly to happen, since something silly inevitably does happen.   Usually, the bride and groom seem to appreciate hearing that--maybe because it takes the edge off what’s otherwise a very momentous occasion.  But when you get down to it, no matter what I say, and no matter what funny things transpire at them, weddings always get down to that one very weighty, serious moment.  The moment when, before God and in the presence of the community, two people commit themselves to a lifetime together. 

Of course, as we all know, not everyone who makes that commitment follows through on it.  Marriages do fail.  Divorce happens.   People who had every intention of keeping their marriage vows, for various reasons, don’t.   In our gospel today, Jesus is tested with the very tricky question of divorce.  “Is it lawful,” the Pharisees ask Jesus, “for a man to divorce his wife?”  And Jesus answer contains these words that we’ve incorporated into the wedding rite, “What God has joined together,” Jesus says, “let no one separate.” 

Now for some of us, there’s comfort in such a black-and-white, straightforward answer.   But not everyone finds this comforting.  Especially those who’ve been divorced, or who are close to someone who has.  Why, some of us might ask, is Jesus such a hard-core when it comes to divorce?  Is it because he wasn’t married himself?  Didn’t Jesus understand how impossible it can be sometimes for two people to stay together?   Jesus comes across as such a liberal in so many other ways…how come all of a sudden, on this issue, he’s a social conservative?  

Well, the Lord Jesus doesn’t fit neatly into our categories.   We like to label people liberal or conservative, but especially with Jesus, our labels are quite beside the point.   The issue here isn’t about the kind of “culture wars” we’re so familiar with.  Jesus was asked the question, “Is divorce lawful?”  And he begins his answer by directing attention to the law of God as it was laid out by Moses, who, as it happened, permitted divorce.  As self-appointed keepers of Moses’ laws, that’s probably what the Pharisees were focused on.  But there is a deeper law, a law that’s built into the fabric of creation, and Jesus goes on to express this deeper reality.  The spiritual reality that God created the marriage bond to be a lifelong institution.  The practical reality that, as God established things in the created order, the relationship between two married people is such that you don’t just walk away from it.   As a woman who’d recently been divorced told me, “Going through a divorce is like attending your own funeral.”   Others have likened divorce to losing a limb.  Even if you leave aside the chaos created when two people who’ve shared property go their separate ways, the emotional fallout is devastating.  And when children are involved, the pain is multiplied.  I have to say that too often I’ve witnessed the agony of young people whose families are being ripped apart.  

Not only that, but as those among us who teach school can verify, the price that’s paid when divorce is widespread impacts far more than just the family that’s going through it.   Teachers these days have to spend a lot of their time and effort on managing kids’ behavior.  Students suffering from depression and anxiety because their families are broken take a toll on the rest of the classroom.  And it’s not just schools that suffer.  Businesses whose employees are trying to survive divorce and its aftermath often deal with decreased productivity--and with the distraction of people trying to seek support from their co-workers.  What Jesus expressed is true on so many levels.  Once two lives have been woven together, legally, emotionally, socially, spiritually and sexually, it truly is as if they are one.  And the consequences of separating what has thus been joined together are immense.  It disrupts the whole larger community. 

Another way to look at all of this is from the positive side.  As our favorite theologian Martin Luther saw it, marriage and family are basic building blocks of an orderly and wholesome society.  The state, Luther taught, has a vested interest in supporting and maintaining marriage, since when people marry and stay married, they help maintain a stability that a wholesome society needs.   This view has been widely adopted and is reflected in our court system today.  It’s from this point of view of “building blocks of society” that Luther came to see marriage and its related institution, parenthood, as vocations, or callings from God.  

Now, as with any calling from God, for Luther, marriage and family life were ways for us to live out our response to God’s grace in Christ.   They can also lead us to stay rooted in God’s grace in Christ.  The work of marriage, Luther said, including the “feelings of resentment” that can arise, are circumstances that “drive us to faith in God and love toward the neighbor, by virtue of manifold trouble…crosses and adversities of all kinds.”  Those are Luther’s actual words…resentment, manifold trouble, crosses and adversities.  Yep, that’s right, Luther himself was a married man…he knew what he was talking about!   The Lord Jesus said, “Those who want to be my followers must pick up their cross and follow me.”  And, as Luther saw it, if we want an ideal training ground to learn how to respond to God’s grace in Christ by heeding Christ’s call to cross-bearing service, marriage is it.      

Our recently-approved ELCA social statement on Human Sexuality spells out the implications of this Lutheran view.   “Marriage” the statement says, “requires constant care and cultivation…,” not only for the sake of the married couple, but because of its impact on many others.  “Marriage is intended not only to protect the people who are married,” the statement goes on…  

“but to signal to the community their intention to live a peaceful and mutually fulfilling life, even as they endeavor to strengthen the community in which they live. The public promises of marriage…therefore, also protect the community by holding people accountable to their vows..” 

When people are held accountable to their marriage vows, and when they stay faithful to them, everyone who depends on that faithfulness is blessed.  The quality of a marriage relationship effects other peoples’ marriages.  And not only that, but as this social statement describes it, it can have a tremendous impact on the next generation.  “Children,” it says, “learn either trust or distrust from their earliest relationships of dependence upon parents and others in the household…. 

Patterns of loyalty and confidence established in the family can reach into all future relationships. Those who do not learn to trust face significant obstacles to becoming trustworthy individuals in the more complicated relationships of modern life.”    

When trust is shattered in a marriage, it has lasting consequences.  Like Jesus’ teachings on divorce, this social statement, simply helps us to come to terms with the way things are. 

The way things are, according to both Jesus and our Lutheran tradition, there are plenty of very good reasons not to divorce.  We Lutherans do recognize that, as spiritually broken beings, there are times when we all violate the way God intends for us to live and to be.  There was a cartoon someone gave me that had a couple sitting up in bed together, each reading their own book.  And the wife says, “Would you mind stopping breathing?” 

Like a lot of humor, there’s a measure of truth in that cartoon.  People can feel so trapped in a bad marriage that they start looking to whatever might release them from it. All marriages fall short of intentions, and difficulties in a marriage are bound to arise. This is to be expected in every human relationship, right?  And in the light of God’s gift of forgiveness, difficulties in a relationship are not a reason to part ways.  But, when spouses grossly violate their promises of faithfulness, when there is no mutual love and respect, when patterns of abuse or infidelity have deeply violated trust, there are times when we must acknowledge the need for a marriage to be legally ended.   

Now, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus seems to be at odds with that conclusion.   But as it’s recorded in another Gospel, the gospel of Matthew, he doesn’t come across as quite so black-and-white.  In Matthew 19, Jesus does make allowance for divorce, in the event of sexual infidelity.   Some scholars point out that Jesus’ teaching in both of these gospels must be taken in its cultural context.  They observe that Jesus was living in a patriarchal setting, where men could easily divorce woman but a woman could not divorce a man…and that women in Jesus’ day had no real choice other than to depend on men to provide for them.  Viewed from this perspective, by prohibiting divorce with either no exception or with very limited exception, some say Jesus appears to be protecting the welfare of married women in his society.  

I think it makes sense to hear Jesus’ words in our gospel today, not as harsh words condemning divorced people, but as words of loving concern, spoken by one who cares deeply for all of us—especially the most vulnerable, and for the social order that we all must live in.   Ultimately, Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross was for all of us—for those who remain married and for those who divorce…for those who uphold trust and respect for their children and their communities by remaining faithful to their marriage vows, and for those who in any way fail to uphold trust and respect.  At some point, whether we stay married or whether we leave a marriage, we all need the grace and forgiveness that God offers us through the cross. 

Maybe we find ourself among the large percentage of people in our society whose marriages have ended in divorce.  Maybe we’re struggling to stay in a marriage where love has grown cold, or where we’re stuck in a toxic, vicious circle of unhealthy patterns or hurtful behavior.   Maybe we’re at a place where we’ve learned to bear the inevitable burdens of family life; maybe we even enjoy prolonged periods of blessedness and wholesomeness—blessedness and wholesomeness that emanates out, through our children, through others who witness and are encouraged by our family life, and through those who are served by us and by our family.  Maybe we’ve never been married, and we’re looking at marriage from the outside with a lot of anxious uncertainty …wondering if this is a step we’ll ever take, or if it’s a step we ever should take. 

Text: Mark 9:38-50

THE PROBLEM WITH SIN

"If I don’t get these jeans, I’m going to die!”…“I’ll be back in one second.”…“You took forever this morning in the shower.”…“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times!” 

Hyperbole.  It’s a commonly-used way of drastically exaggerating in order to make a point.   Our gospel today contains a multitude of examples of hyperbole.  Okay, it only contains four or five.  But you know what I mean—there’s quite a few of them!   All that stuff about getting weighted down and thrown into the sea, and chopping off important body parts and being cast into hell, “where the worm never dies and the flame is never quenched,” is so harsh-sounding that we can’t help but pay it some serious attention and feel downright uncomfortable.  Even if it is all metaphorical. But that’s what’s supposed to happen.  Jesus is using the figure of speech known as hyperbole to teach his disciples about the destructiveness of sin, and about their need to put a stop to sin in their lives when they become aware of it.

As Christians who follow in the tradition of our favorite theologian, Martin Luther, we revel in saying--over and over again, that we’re not saved by anything we do or don’t do.  We insist that whether we sin or don’t sin has no bearing on where we go after we die.  Jesus’ sayings here in Mark’s gospel, we say, have to be read in the light of the many other sayings and teachings of Jesus, along with the rest of the New Testament.  Elsewhere, the Scriptures make it quite clear that it’s God’s grace that saves us, totally apart from what we do….that when it comes to having a right standing with God and eternal life, the only thing that matters is our faith in Christ.    The Bible says, for instance, that “God proves his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”   It tells us that, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  And we also claim the biblical assurance that “nothing can separate us from the love of God that’s our in Christ Jesus.” 

So, when it comes to our having a right standing with God, our sin doesn’t matter.  For the purpose of getting into heaven, God’s unconditional love for us in Christ is all that matters.  Unless we’re totally clueless, though, we also have to acknowledge, that it still matters greatly what we do or don’t do.  Whether we sin or don’t sin still matters.  Although the Bible and the cross of Christ assure us that our sin can’t separate us from God, sin still presents us with many serious problems. Enough-so that, in today’s gospel our Lord hyperbolically warns us to deal with our sin in whatever way we have to—in whatever way we can.  

The first big, obvious problem with sin is that it hurts us--and it hurts others.  Some say that the essence of sin is an attitude...an attitude that puts us in the place of God. It makes sense, doesn’t it?  If we’re the object of our own worship, then it’s easy for us to put ourselves first.  To put our needs and desires above those of others.   And that, in turn leads us to hurt others—either through what we do or through our neglect.  Since having this sinful attitude is a condition shared by every person on the planet, we’ve found ways to mitigate this somewhat…through laws and other social consequences that restrain us somewhat from acting out in totally self-serving ways.  But in spite of this, there’s enough selfish behavior going around that we can see the effects of sin almost everywhere we look.  Self-centered choices and behaviors tend to especially impact the most vulnerable among us…the young and impressionable, immigrants and those who are born into poverty, excluded and persecuted minorities, the chronically ill.   When we think and act in sinful ways, we help contribute to worsening conditions for such folks. 

Of course, sin also impacts us negatively, in a number of ways.  Sin robs us of our peace—both individually and corporately.  When we hurt others, we stir up enmity against us; that’s so inevitable, it’s pretty much a no-brainer that sin leads us to be at a state of war with each other, either literally or figuratively.  But how does our sin rob us of our own, individual peace?  If we have any semblance of the humanity God created us to have, then we have a conscience, and so our sin produces guilt in us—a sense of self-condemnation when we do things that hurt others.  And that guilt is like a heavy burden, draining joy and peace from our spirits.  Guilt also gives us a sense of alienation from God.  It’s not that our sin or our guilt actually do separate us from God. The cross of Christ shows us that God loves and accepts us in spite of our sin.  And yet we can mistake the condemnation of our own conscience for God’s condemnation.  And that, in turn, can cause a vicious cycle, where more and more we stray from the wholesome benefits of a relationship with God, into things that are even more unwholesome, and that are yet more guilt-inducing. 

One of the more unwholesome things guilt can lead us into is arrogance.  To compensate for or cover up our own guilt, we can look down on others, in an attempt to exalt ourselves into something that we’re not.  This self-appointed righteousness often shows itself in the ugly form of taking the things of God and using them for self-serving purposes—such as a means for discounting or excluding or judging others.   We see this all too often among religious folk...those who seem to relish taking verses or passages of Scripture and using them to condemn the behavior of certain people.  If that were what the Bible is for, well, there’d be plenty of condemnation to go around for each and every one of us, wouldn’t there?  The Lord Jesus himself ran smack into this sin of self-righteousness.  He even exposed it, repeatedly.  You could say it’s what led to his being crucified.   Those who practice self-righteous condemnation may sound very spiritual and moral, but in reality, they stand directly against what God in Christ is all about:  unconditional love and mercy. 

However we understand it, however we experience it, one key consequence of sin is a lack of fulfillment.  Sin tends to leave with a sense that something is missing.  We may try to fill the void we feel with all kinds of things—attempting to sate our various appetites…throwing ourself into a career…trying to establish a sense of security for ourselves or our family.   But these things never work, because what’s lacking isn’t any of these things.  What’s lacking is a substantive sense of purpose in our lives.  As Christians, we’re all called and destined by God to be part of God’s mission team in the world; God has set us apart as his people so that, in a world filled with evil and suffering, we might stand as living signs together of God’s presence and God’s grace and God’s mercy.  Sin and guilt—especially in the form of self-righteousness, can cause us to lose sight of this vocation, to get focused on the wrong things, or to be simply confused.   It may be that some of us are thinking right now, “Yeah, that can happen—look at so-and-so, for instance.  That’s just what they’re like”   But lest we be quick to look at others, let’s be clear that all of us are subject to sin, and so all of us can easily stray into false paths, that cause us to miss the point of what it’s really all about.  

Take Jesus’ original disciples, for example.  In today’s gospel, they come to the Lord, telling him how they tried to exclude someone they’d encountered, because he was “not following them.” They obviously think they’ve gotten it right; you can almost hear the pat on the back they’re giving themselves in telling Jesus this.  But they’ve gotten it dead wrong.  And so Jesus has to straighten them out, calling them to turn from their narrow vision of being his followers to embrace God’s vision for mission and ministry—which is a very inclusive one:  “Whoever is not against us is for us,” Jesus teaches them.  And it’s interesting to note how it’s at this very point that Jesus launches into his statements about being drowned or to mutilating themselves, in order to avoid sin and its consequences.

I think we all know that Jesus isn’t expecting anyone to take him literally.  After all, if we did take him literally, then we’d all either be dead or hobbling around blindly without appendages.  I do think that Jesus is telling us to deal with the problem of sin.  And I think he may even be hinting at what Martin Luther eventually came to see as God’s remedy for the problem we all have with sin.  I think Jesus may be directing us to a daily remembrance of our baptism.

Baptism is more than just a one-time event.  It’s not just a cute naming ceremony, nor is it a mere “get out of hell free card.”  Through baptism, God provides us with many gifts—gifts for daily living.   And, as Luther taught, we are to lay claim to these gifts we receive through baptism, every day. The way we do this, he said, is by drowning our sinful self.  Luther didn’t talk about having a millstone tied around our neck and being thrown into the sea, like Jesus did.  But he did say that we can put our sinful self to death—as in a drowning, through daily repentance--so that God can raise us up to live a new life.  Essentially, recalling our baptism daily can mean that the part of our self that leads us to guilt-induced, self-righteous arrogance can be figuratively thrown into the sea and drowned, today, tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that. It can mean that, as baptized people, we can turn to God each new day, asking that those parts of our inner selves that cause us to sin would be cut off…so that we and those around us can be spared the grief and suffering that a life completely dominated by sin causes. 

Now, does this mean that any of us are going to literally be without sin?  Of course not.   Remembrance of our baptism through daily repentance doesn’t mean we’re going to live perfect and godly lives in every way.  But we can come to a place where sin doesn’t rule over us—and where more and more, Christ and his love come to take root and grow in our lives.   Just like a pine tree that’s still remains green for a long, long time after it’s been cut down, sin will continue to show its color in our lives, even if we do drown the sinful self through repentance every single day.   Our Lord Jesus has promised us though, that as we abide in him, our lives will bear fruit. 

We abide in Jesus by “living wet”—by claiming our baptismal connection to his death and resurrection every day.  This is more likely to happen when we’re part of a community of folks who are all seeking to live wet—who are all trying to make daily use of their baptism.  As Christians, we can help and encourage each other to do this.  In fact, outside of the Christian community, there really isn’t any other place where we can expect to get this kind of support and encouragement. That’s why we talk about “building spiritual friendships.”  Look around you—if you want support to effectively confront sin through your baptism…well, we’re it!

Hypocrisy:  putting up a front of being one way but doing just the opposite.  It has all kinds of different guises.  In Jesus’ day, it showed itself in those who passionately followed and tried to enforce on others religious traditions that had to do with ritual purity—the washing of hands and cooking utensils and eating foods that were prepared a certain way.  This ritual purity code was supposed to be a way of showing one’s commitment to God and to being righteous, godly people.  All too often though it Was simply an empty religious exercise that masked all kinds of nastiness. The proponents of this form of hypocrisy, some folks known as the Pharisees, got into it with Jesus because Jesus and his disciples were ignoring these rules.   Today we can look to certain well-known religious traditions that have established their own codes about certain things…you know, things like no dancing or drinking or smoking or cussing.   But those traditions are far from the only attempts today to externally present a certain image of righteousness or holiness.   In our society, there’s a health culture that seems to inspire the same kind of pride and self-righteousness that Jesus confronted in the Pharisees.  People who call themselves Vegans, for instance, who eat only plant-based foods and who condemn those who meat as evil.   Fitness enthusiasts, who look down on those who have an ample supply of body fat.  Former addicts, who harshly judge those who continue to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, or who abuse other substances.  

Of course, it’s not that what we do to our bodies or put into our bodies doesn’t matter.   It can matter, a great deal.   But, as the Lord Jesus put it, when it comes to being holy, when it comes to establishing ourselves as being righteous in the eyes of God, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile,” Jesus said…the things that come out are what defile.”  It’s within ourselves, Jesus taught, that we all can find the real, unholy substance of evil:  destructive sexual attitudes…hostility toward certain neighbors that can result in our causing them harm…neglect when it comes to our neighbors’ physical needs…greed…deceitfulness…a willingness to speak ill of others… the tendency to make ourselves and those we consider to be like us to be somehow better than others. And of course, there’s the poor judgment that can arise from any of these.    These are the things, Jesus points out, that matter when it comes to our standing before God.   And if we’re really being honest, I think we’d agree that these things are so much a part of who we all are that we really can’t do anything to relieve ourselves of them.  Cruel, selfish attitudes like these are simply part of our human condition.   It’s not a simple matter of saying, “Okay, I’m giving up my sinful attitudes”--like we might give up eating meat or quit smoking.   We can’t just commit ourselves to a program of developing righteous thoughts and behavior, as if we were taking on a plan to eat right and exercise.  No matter what we do or don’t do, our underling tendencies are going to be in opposition to the way God would have us be.  It’s what we mean when we say in the order for confession and forgiveness, “We are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.”  In our heart of hearts, in our secret thoughts, evil will remain embedded and somewhat active—regardlessof our best intentions.   Our favorite theologian, Martin Luther, on his deathbed, looked back on his life and faced God’s judgment by writing these final words on a scrap of paper, “We are beggars.”  Luther’s final written words point us to what he spent a good part of his life proclaiming and teaching:   that we are lost and condemned people who have no hope of doing anything to establish our own salvation…but that God in Christ “came to seek and to save the lost”…and that only by putting our trust in Christ’s righteousness and not our own can we find the assurance and blessedness of a right standing before God.

So then, does that leave us completely hopeless when it comes to the reality of evil within us?  Should we despair of ever changing into more wholesome people who develop better attitudes and better patterns of behavior?  No!  Because, with that assurance and blessedness that comes to us through faith in Christ, we find that we’ve been given the free gift of a relationship—a relationship with a wholesome, holy Lord, who is the source of all goodness.  And through that relationship, we can begin to find our way to a better life.   Our spiritual brokenness, our fundamental evil inclinations, are going to remain a part of us until the day we die.  But with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, who promises to abide with us and to dwell in us as we put our trust in him, we can start to find some measure of redemption, we can experience some relief from that part of us that the New Testament calls “the sinful self.”

As a young man, I found that I was hooked on smoking cigarettes.  It was an unfortunate addiction I picked up as a teenager.  But after I had a sort of spiritual awakening, and as I began to exercise my Christian faith, I found that it was natural to cut down on this habit considerably.  But I was hooked pretty badly, and I still continued to smoke, often maybe 2 or 3 cigarettes a week.   I remember there was a fellow at my home church named Dewey Lyons.  I’ll never forget Dewey; every Sunday morning after worship, Dewey would connect with me, and at some point in the conversation, he’d pat my shirt pocket to see if I had any cigarettes, and if he found some there, he’d just take them and throw them away.  I never resented it, just as I didn’t resent anyone who expressed concern for my health until I was finally able to quit smoking completely. 

With the help of Christ, who’s at work, within us and without—at work in our own minds and at work in the Christian community, we can learn to exercise some self-control and some wisdom when it comes to what we put into our bodies, and when it comes to what we do with our bodies.  Not because it somehow makes us holy or pure or better people, but because as people who’ve been redeemed by God in Christ, we are not our own any more.  We belong to God now.  And we belong to each other.  God has set us apart through baptism to live out God’s purpose in the world together.  So, what I do or don’t do affects my ability to work together with the rest of you, to do what it is that God calls us to do.  And what we’re called to do, is to live out what we at Rejoice call the “marks of DiscipleLife”…somespecific ways that we can follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus to engage God’s mission. 

Now, if we’re failing to do what’s wholesome and good, if we’re engaging in some attitudes and behaviors or habits that we know in our hearts aren’t good or right, if we’re doing some stuff that makes us feel guilty, what I’d hope we’d all know is that this in no way makes us worse than anyone else.  There is no distinction, the Bible tells us, all have fallen short of the glory of God….and God’s love for us is the same, whatever the character of our moral choices. Christ didn’t suffer and die on a cross to show good people how worthy they are; Christ suffered and died to show us the depths of God’s love for even the most sinful, warped and depraved parts of ourselves.   It’s “While we were yet sinners,” the Bible says, that “Christ died for us,” and the cross of Christ is how “God has proved his love for us.” But, the Biblealso teaches us that, as we put our trust in Christ, we can look for God to work in our hearts and minds, to lead us away from our evil inclinations, and to lead us toward more Christ-like ways of being in the world.  

God didn’t come to us in Christ to suffer and die for the righteous…he came to suffer and die for the unrighteous.  And God didn’t give us our bodies as a way of establishing ourselves as holy and righteous in the sight of others and God; only Christ’s body, and Christ’s blood can establish us as holy and righteous.    But, our bodies are the primary means we have for living out Christ-like loving serviceto God and our neighbors.   And so, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that we would spend a certain amount time and energy in taking care of our bodies?   I’ve noticed that, on days when I go to the gym and work out, I’m much better equipped to do my job as a pastor.  If our bodies are our primary means for living out Christ-like loving service, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that we’d look for ways to shake unhealthy habits or addictions that might cripple our capacity to serve our neighbors in need?  I love to drink coffee; I hate think of what I’d be like on Sunday mornings without my morning cup of coffee.  But I’ve noticed that if I limit my caffeine intake, I’m energetic for longer than if I keep pouring myself cup after cup. Most folks I know who’ve wound up in one have found that it’s pretty hard from a hospital bed to worship weekly, or to build spiritual friendships, or to give to God and our neighbors in need.  So, it adds up that we’d do well to not neglect our health, right?   Getting enough rest, eating right and exercising, limiting our intake of potentially harmful substances, getting medical attention when we need it, these things are all consistent with doing what it takes to engage God’s mission.

Flu season is coming.  And this year, we’re being told, is likely to be a pretty bad year, what with the HN1 virus, or “Swine Flu,” still active on top of the usual flu strains.   Washing our hands and coughing into our sleeve and staying home if we’re sick and other common sense measures are not going to make us “better people.”  But they may allow us to be better vessels of God’s love and mercy than if we behave carelessly about these things.  

The thing is, we’re all infected--infected with an incurable, species-wide, terminal condition.  A condition that makes us prone to all kinds of evil thoughts, that can lead to all kinds of destructive choices and actions.  This condition is what leads us on Sunday to come to worship God and sing God’s praises…and then the rest of the week to serve and to worship primarily ourselves.  Now, in our baptism, God in Christ has given us the means to mitigate that condition.  Each day, we can claim the promise of God’s love and forgiveness.  Each day we can ask God to drown that diseased, sinful self that we find within us in the waters of our baptism, and to fill us with faith in Christ, so that the Spirit of the living Christ might be raised up in us.   And each day as we do this, we can look for new patterns of wholesomeness to emerge in our lives…we can look for more Christ-like inclinations, that can result in a healthier approach to living.    But, these more wholesome patterns should give us no reason for pride.  No matter how healthy or wholesome we may be, we have no cause to look down our nose at others.  Because, any goodness we have and show in our lives doesn’t come from us.  It’s simply what happens when we look to Christ.  We’re just the vessels—and broken ones, at that. The more we look to Christ, the more we’ll find his love and his mercy are being poured into us. 

A VERY LUCKY HAND

The story of the Lewis and Clark expedition is the stuff legends are made of—only this story isn’t a legend, it really happened.  It was around 1800, a time when the American frontier reached only just a little past St. Louis, Missouri.  Under the command of a gifted friend of Thomas Jefferson named Merriweather Lewis, the “Corps of Discovery,” as it was called--a group of mostly rugged Kentucky woodsmen, had slowly plodded through uncharted western wilderness.  They survived off the land, carrying their gear in small boats, often hauling those boats upstream in rivers by hand with ropes. They were seeking a passage to the little-known west coast of the continent, trying to find a way through to a place where only a few sea-going ships had ever come.  After many months, the expedition came to the vast geographic wall that we now call the Rocky mountains.  At this point, they’d either have to try to move forward blindly, without knowing if there was a way through or not, or else they’d have had to turn around and try to make it back toward St. Louis for the winter.   The risk of moving forward was that they’d simply get lost and perish somewhere up in the mountains.  But just as Captain Lewis and his advance party approached the mountains, a handful of Native Americans suddenly appeared.   This tribe had never had any contact with white men before, so there was a language barrier.  This barrier would’ve been as insurmountable as the Rockies—except.  Except for the stroke of good fortune that was embodied in the expedition’s only female member…a young Native American woman named Sacagawea.

At 12 years old, Sacagawea had been kidnapped by enemy tribesmen; she was carried far away and sold into slavery.  A French trader had taken her as one of his wives and with her had a child.  The Corps of Discovery had on their way established their winter camp near where the French trader was living in what we today know as North Dakota.  And it was there and then that Captain Lewis learned that this young woman had come from a tribe located far to the west—a tribe that was in the general path that he hoped to take.  So, in the event they might need a translator, and that she might be able to translate for them Lewis arranged for the trader, his young wife, and their infant son to accompany the Corps on their expedition.  And incredibly, as it turned out, the leader of the handful of Native Americans that Captain Lewis encountered as he approached the mountain was none other than Sacagawea’s own brother!   The two had a tearful reunion, and then, through Sacagawea, Captain Lewis was able to talk to her brother, to arrange for some guides and some horses to carry the corps through a snowy mountain pass that enabled them to complete their long trek to the Pacific Ocean. 

What were the odds of that happening?  If you leave it completely to chance, I’d say pretty long odds.  But if you see God at work in the whole thing, dealing the group of explorers just the right hand of cards, then the chances look much, much better.  In our gospel today, Simon Peter appears to have truly appreciated the hand he’d been dealt—and the hand that dealt it to him.  Now, the bulk of Jesus followers had come to what they considered an impass in their ability to accept his teachings…and they’d chosen to turn back from following him.  It was at this point that Jesus turned to his twelve closest followers, and he asked them, “Do you also wish to go away?”  And Simon Peter answer shows that he knows and values what God has dealt him in Jesus.   “Lord, to whom can we go?” says Peter. “Youhave the words of eternal life!  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” 

Being Christians means we’ve been dealt a particular hand of cards.  For one thing, it means we’re baptized.   And among other things, being baptized means that we’re called to follow Jesus.   But ourability to follow Jesus—and our ability to keep on following him when things start to get a bit challenging, well, that depends on whether or not we have another card—or maybe I should say whether we realize that we have it.  That card is faith in Jesus.  Faith in Jesus…a substantive trust in the precious gift that God has given us in Jesus. If we don’t have faith in Jesus, or if we don’t realize that we have that card to play, or if we simply discard it, we can easily start looking for other cards to draw—especially if things start to get tough.  I mean, following Jesus often isn’t an easy thing for us to do…and there are all kinds of other things besides Jesus that we can set our hearts on following after, right?   Things that appeal to our senses.  Things that don’t challenge us so much.  Things that, at least for the short run, would seemto be nice to do or to have or to be.  What are those things for you?  What are the things that call to you, that compel you to head in their direction?  What are the things that for you, can have a lot more appeal than following Jesus?  

For many of us these days, it’s our job.  Maybe we really like what we do, and so it’s easier for us to put time in at the workplace than it is to engage in things that have to do with say, serving people, or studying the Bible, or engaging God’s mission.   Or, maybe in a crumbling economy, we’re simply struggling to keep our job secure…and we figure one way to avoid getting the ax is to put in a lot of long hours.   Long hours that don’t leave us with much time or energy left over to follow Christ. 

For others of us it’s stuff that appeals to us.  We get bombarded with a constant deluge of advertizing…glittery, sexy, appetite-stirring, image-conscious marketing.  There’s a reason companies will spend millions and even billions of dollars on advertising…it’s because advertising works.  We may not have the slightest inclination to buy a new car, but one well-done commercial that portrays the merits and the sleek beauty and power of a particular automobile, and it’s “Man!  Do I ever want one of those!” If the ad is really well-done we might even go, “Man!  I need one of those!”  What else would lead so many to spend in excess of $30,000 for transportation, when you can get a reliable vehicle for well under $20,000?   What would that extra $10-plus thousand do if it was given instead to God, or to our neighbors in need?

In this society, it’s really not hard at all to get pulled off track from following Jesus.  Stuff comes in so many forms and it’s dangled before us in so many attractive ways, it’s difficult not to get swept up chasing after it.   We can even develop sort of a Pavlovian response :  we see advertising, we’re led to go buy something, that thing satisfies our desire or gives us a lift for a little while…and then, we see more ads and so we go drooling after more stuff.  I don’t know if you’ve seen that that one Veggie Tale video for kids, the one where Larry just keeps on buying more and more things at a place called “Stuff Mart”…and Bob asks him , “Larry, how much stuff do you really need?”  And Larry goes, “I don’t know, how much stuff is there?”  How many of us, when the Sunday paper comes, or the mail arrives, we gofirst thing, straight to the ads?  How many of us have come to see going to the mall as a good, wholesome family activity?  How many of us spend far more time and energy shopping—online or in the stores, than we do building spiritual friendships, or praying, or serving in one or more of our church’s many ministries? 

The vast majority of Jesus’ followers turned away from following him at one point, because following Jesus started to stretch them considerably.  And so they found other things to pursue in their lives.  Apparently, it wasn’t hard to do, even way back then.  But Simon Peter and the other eleven Jesus had originally called to follow him stayed on as his disciples…at least at this point.  Peter even expressed his reason for valuing Jesus over any other options that were out there:  his faith in Jesus as “the Holy One of God” who had “the words of eternal life.”   Eventually, when the Lord went to Jerusalem and embraced suffering and death at the hands of his enemies, even the twelve—Peter included, abandoned him.  But ultimately though, their faith drew them back again. Ultimately, they came to believe and to know that, in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, they’d been given the One thing that’s worth putting their trust in—the one thing that’s worth following…that living, eternal Word of love and light and life, that was dealt and given to all of us by God, on the cross.

Captain Merriweather Lewis was dealt a certain hand.  And he chose to hang on to the one card that, as it wound up, made all the difference:  a teenaged girl named Sacagawea.   We too have been dealt a certain hand—a very lucky hand. A hand that includes both the call to follow Jesus and many, many good reasons to put our trust in Jesus.  Will we throw those cards away and go looking for something else?  Or will we see what good cards they are—and hang onto them?

I guess that was one hungry kid!   In last week’s gospel, we read how the Lord Jesus had fed a whole multitude of hungry people, with just a few loaves and some fish.   The crowd he’d fed had seemed to respond in faith, at least a little…they’d remarked that surely Jesus must be a prophet sent by God.  But then they promptly dropped the faith response for something, well, less faithful. They wanted to crown Jesus their king, since he’d shown his ability to fill their bellies.   Jesus’ response to this was to withdraw from them for a bit.   But the crowd was so impressed with Jesus’ ability to feed them that they hunted him down.   In today’s gospel, we read the conversation that took place when they’d found him.  And it shows that the people still weren’t looking at Jesus from a faith perspective. Nevertheless, Jesusengages them.  He patiently works to lead them to the place where they would come to have a life-giving, saving faith in what God was doing for them, in and through him. 

A vital, sustaining, active faith in Jesus Christ…a faith that’ll carry us through all the challenges and struggles of life.  A faith that gives us such a sense of peace and contentment that we don’t waste our time chasing after meaningless prizes, trying to satisfy insatiable appetites.  A faith that leads to loving service to God and to our neighbors.   This kind of faith—an authentic Christian faith, doesn’t just happen on its own.  A faith like this is passed on, from those who have it, to those who don’t.  It’s intentionally nurtured and cultivated and transmitted, into receptive hearts and minds.   Today, I want to invite you to reflect with me on the call of the Christian community to be those through whom God works to bring about a vibrant, living faith.  

“This is the work of God,” the Lord Jesus said, “that you believe in him who he has sent.”  A faith relationship with God in Christ doesn’t come because we choose to have it.  It comes because God works to bring it about in us.    All of us who’ve wound up here in the church, and who’ve come to have a saving faith in Christ, have done so because God has worked in our lives, to call this saving faith into being in us.  Likely from an early age, God has patiently engaged us through our families, through Sunday school teachers and other church members, through pastors and camp counselors, through all kinds of folks, doing what it takes to bring us to the point where we can trust in God’s gracious caring presence, in our lives and in the world.  As the small catechism, puts it, “We cannot by our own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ”…But God the Holy Spirit works…to call us to and to keep us in a true faith. 

And one of God’s primary means for doing this, I’m convinced, is parents.  If faith is actively sown, nurtured and grown during those times when we’re most receptive, in our early developmental years, we’re much more likely to wind up with a substantive faith.   From time to time, you run across those parents who decide to just let their kids “make up their own minds” about what to believe “when they get old enough.”   It’s virtually always a sad thing to watch…key stages of development are simply wasted--crucial points when the language and images and stories of the Christian faith, and experiences with God and God’s people, could all be working together to help kids develop and start to make use of Christian faith.  You know, a lot of research has shown that when kids are exposed to a foreign languageby the time they’re three years old, they’ll have a much easier time picking up that language when they get older.  I’d be willing to put money on that being the case with Christian faith as well.  When young children are exposed to the sights and sounds of Christian worship; when kids hear stories of Jesus and learn about God’s promises, when they’re surrounded by people of faith living out their faith in Christ in many different ways, it’s going to be a lot easier for them to engage in those things that will help them to make that faith their own, later on in life. 

Now, that in itself is enough reason for parents to make a point of getting themselves and their kids up and here every week for worship, and when it’s offered, for Sunday morning Christian Education. It’s a strong argument for getting our kids to attend youth group events, or Vacation Bible School, or whatever opportunities there are that have a faith nurturing component.    Faith, it’s been said, is not so muchtaught as it is caught.   And the more the young among us are exposed to other people of faith, who engage in faith-related activities, the more likely they are to “catch” faith themselves. 

“But life is already too busy,” some of us might say.  “Kids today have so much to bear…way too much homework, extracurricular activities with heavy schedules and lots of practices.  Church activities are just one more thing—and since they’re optional, doesn’t it make sense to let them off the hook when it comes to church stuff?…you know, let ‘em sleep in, let ‘em just rest or chill, let them use that time forsports or other activities they enjoy?”    Kids today do have an awful lot to bear.  A lot more than most of us adults did when we were kids.   We parents today have a lot to bear too.  It takes a lot of time and effort to support our kids—to make sure they’ve got the means to do all their school work, to stay on top of their busy schedules and cart them around to activities, to show we care by turning out for their events.   Life for families with kids these days can range from hectic to exhausting.  

I know, because I’ve been one of those exhausted parents myself.  Let me share a couple of thoughts on this matter, from somebody else who was a parent…someone who had cause to address many others who were parents…a fellow named Martin Luther.   As a parish priest, our favorite theologian preached whole sermons on parenting.  One of those sermons was on the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.”  Luther preached that, “God communicates honor to father and mother; for which reason there is no greater authority on earth than the dominion of father and mother.”   If you consider it, even though he preached some 500 years ago, what Luther said still holds true today!  The way society still orders itself, we parents do have authority over our kids!  More authority than anybodyhas over anyone else--unless you’re in the military, or in prison.   Parents have the legal right—and in some cases, the legal obligation, to set and enforce parameters and limits for our kids. Society grants us all this authority because, well, if we don’t steer them straight, chances are nobody else will.  And, according to Luther, there’s a very good reason for this: God, he said, “has given you children and the means of their support, not that you might simply have pleasure in them and bring them up for worldly display.  You are earnestly commanded to bring them up for the service of God, or otherwise you will perish with your children, as the first commandment says, ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children…”  Luther stressed that we parents must learn that our children are not so entirely our own that we can withhold them from God…they are more his than ours, Luther taught.

I don’t know about you, but I hear in these words a stern warning...a warning that, if I fail to use my parental authority for the reason God gave it to me, if I fail to do things that lead my kids to develop a wholesome, vibrant faith, eventually there’s a price to be paid.  Not only for my kids themselves, but I’m not going to escape the consequences, either!   It’s not that God is going to actively punish them or me for my failure in this regard…it’s simply the way things work.  As Luther understood it, the commandments, like “honor your father and mother” are there to help us to see certain demands and limits that God has built into the order of creation.   And the commandments can help us to see that, if we want to have a good life here on this earth, we’ve got to heed those demands and limits.  In this case, it meansmaking sure our kids know who they are and whose they are as God’s people.  That’s one reason that in, the rite for Holy Baptism, we ask parents to publicly commit to raising their children in the Christian faith—and to do that in some very specific ways. 

Another way of looking at this, for us Lutherans, is in terms of being called—called to raise our children as people of faith.   “Most certainly,” Luther wrote, “father and mother are apostles, bishops and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel.”  Apostles, bishops and priests.  Okay parents, it’s time for us all to put on our clergy collars and miters (a miter is one of those pointy hats that bishops wear)…and it’s time to pick up our shepherd’s staffs.   Because, God is calling all of us good Lutheran moms and dads to be missionaries, to share the good news, not with people over in Africa someplace, but with our own kids.  

I can almost hear some parents saying right about now, “Um, yeah, but, I don’t know how to do that…I’ve never really done that, and I can’t really see myself doing it either.  I’m no theologian or church professor like Martin Luther.  I’m no preacher…I’m just an average church member.  Just talking about my faith doesn’t come easy to me.”  The average Lutheran hasn’t typically been one to talk much about faith.   When it comes to being outward with our faith, praying out loud at the dinner table is about the extent many of us go. But today that’s changing.  In congregations all over the place, partnerships are growing, partnerships where parents and others are finding ways to work together to raise up faith in the hearts and minds of their young.   At Rejoice, we’ve developed a number of significant ways to do this. 

First, there’s our Kids of the Kingdom ministry.   Kids of the Kingdom is a non-traditional approach to Sunday morning Christian education for younger kids.   In the traditional approach, Sunday school teachers struggled and quickly burned out, trying to produce weekly lessons throughout a school year and to teach those lessons for an hour to kids who mostly didn’t want to be there—and who too oftenweren’t there. In Kids of the Kingdom, teams of adults and older kids, walk alongside children, working to build an experience that kids can look forward to.    Ministry teams cultivate the kind of ‘good soil’ where seeds of faith can be planted and nurtured.   Just like farmers have to spend a lot of time and effort cultivating and tending the soil, a good portion of the Kids of the Kingdom hour is spent on creating a bond of trust and respect and enthusiasm among the kids, and between the kids and the ministry team members.  Then, within that context, there are large and small group activities that have to do withDiscovering the Bible, or Experiencing God, or Being the Church.   Since we’ve started to use this approach, some parents have said, “But the kids aren’t; getting taught stuff they need to know…they’re not learning the Bible stories we learned when we grew up going to Sunday School.”   To anyone who has that concern, I want to say that I’m really glad that you care, and I’m thrilled you can hear God’s call to share the gospel with your kids.  And I want to urge you to sign up to be part of the Kids of the Kingdom ministry team for one or more of our 10-week blocks this coming school year!   That’s one sure way you can get your concern addressed! Just be aware that our approach to Sunday morning Christian education is based on the reality that before you can put something worthwhile into a kid’s heart and mind, you have to open up the kid.  And that requires a bit of time and effort! 

Kids of the Kingdom sort of mirrors what happens in our Confirmation Ministry at Rejoice, also known as “Faith Incubators.”  When kids reach 7^th grade, we ask their parents to serve as part of a ministry team, to help provide different kinds of weekly “faith incubating” events every Wednesday.  “Faith Incubators” recognizes that, while it is important to teach faith content, you don’t produce faith in someone just by sticking a funnel in their head and dumping in a bunch of knowledge.  So, instead of just sitting there, listening to a pastor talk at them about the catechism for a hour or so every week, like so many of us suffered through when we were in confirmation, Faith Incubators youth sometimes come together to learn…and sometimes they do service projects…and sometimes they just enjoy fellowship--have somefun and get to know each other better.  Whenever they get together though, they get into these small groups with, what we call Group Guides—some adults and older youth, and they build relationships and they process questions of faith and they discuss what it means to be and to do church together.  Many of our Group Guides, by the way, are parents…although anyone--older youth, other adults who care, are invited to do so and often do. To be a Guide, you don’t have to be an expert or a teacher.  The only requirement is a willingness to spend some time learning with and growing with and laughing with and playing with and praying with some really neat young people.  We also invite parents and others to serve on our Faith Incubators team in other ways:  to help plan logistics and coordinate details, to season my learning event presentations with “creative interruptions,” and—at the very least, to take turns providing, serving and cleaning up after a light meal for the kids to share during their small group time.  You know, the main way we humans learn is by observation.  So, when kids observe parents and others living out their faith by serving them as part of a ministry team together, I’m convinced they’re learning as much or even more than a Bible story or catechism lesson is going to teach them.   They learn by observing a living, active faith.

Alongside our Kids of the Kingdom and Faith Incubators confirmation ministry teams, we also have a constant need for parents and other adults to help with planning youth group events, to host youth events, to lead youth Bible studies, and to go along as caring adults when our kids go away on Mission trips and to synod and churchwide youth gatherings and to church camp retreats.  And parents, what’s great about doing any of this is you’re not only helping to grow your own kid’s faith, you’re helping grow faith in other parents’ kids too.  As one parent put it just this past week, “It works out really great, because when it comes to God and the church, my own kids won’t listen to me, but they’ll listen to another adult!”

You know, if you want a sign that God is moving in some big ways at Rejoice in this regard, you only need to look at our Vacation Bible School … we’re offering four days of faith nurturing activities for kids this week — with a whole lot of parents helping to bring it off!    What’s really impressive is that we’re going to do this, and your pastor hasn’t even lifted a finger to make it happen!  Of course, with VBS and with pretty much every youth and children’s ministry we have at Rejoice, it’s not just parents—it’s older youth, it’s older adults, its many others who care enough to pass on their faith. 

God is at work here at Rejoice.  You can tell, because we’re not leaving it up to our kids to somehow find faith on their own.  And, as a result, we’re seeing among us a growing number of young people witha faith that makes a real difference….with a faith that’s about more than “What can I get out of it?”   I’m convinced that as we keep on building these faith-nurturing partnership, we’re gonna see a lot moreyoung people developing an authentic Christian faith—a faith that feeds, not on satisfying their appetites, a faith that feeds on Jesus, the true bread of life.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

When I was a kid growing up, my family would go on these long camping trips every summer in our Starcraft pop-top tent camper.  These summer camping trips, we found, were a great getaway from the grind and routines of the rest of the year.  After a day of driving, we’d pull into a camp ground, choose a campsite, crank up the tent on our pop-top camper, and then just relax doing whatever we wanted to do.  I could never understand why my mom always just wanted to cook dinner.  Actually, there’s always plenty for everyone to do when you’re camping.  There’s firewood to scrounge for, water to haul, the campfire to build and tend.   There’s unpacking and repacking the car so everything you might need is accessible.  It’s a strange thing, though; when you’re camping, none of these tasks seems to be achore! I guess it’s because you’re operating outside of your everyday routines and pressures.  Camping trips are a great getaway—every family should try it at some point.   Linda and I and the kids are looking forward to our camping trip together in a few weeks. When you’re camping, you’re pretty much cut off from it all—no internet, no TV, often you even find yourself out of cell-phone range, so there’s no calls or texting to distract anyone.  Most families I know of are work-and-activity-saturated, and even though they live in the same house, they’re dispersed by technology.  I’d say there’re few better ways to reconnect with each other than to go camping.

The Lord Jesus had sent his closest followers out in ministry teams to serve people in his name throughout the region.  Now they’d returned to debrief with him.  And apparently, as they came back to Jesus from all these different places they’d been, the disciples had inadvertently led all kinds of folks right to their home base.  In fact, it was getting crazy…so many people were coming and going, it says, that Jesus and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat!    So, the Lord decided it was time for them to take a break together—to reconnect as a family of disciples.  He said to them, “Come on, let’s get away from all this; let’s go off someplace by ourselves, so we can just relax together.”   They packed their camping supplies into their pop-top tent camper—actually it was a sailboat, and they took off for afamily vacation.  

You can imagine how much they were looking forward to it…after the constant demands of doing all that ministry, the pressure of trying to work together to deal with what seems to have been asnowballing number of people seeking what it was that Jesus and his disciples had to offer….  To just break away from it all, to chill together…to play some Mexican Train, or Hearts or Rummy, or whatever it was they liked to do.  They were heading for this little lakefront town called Genessaret, on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee.  It was about 20 miles north of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.  Who knows? Perhaps Jesus knew of a nice campground there; maybe he even knew of some fun activities or places they go see together there--like the world’s biggest wad of gum or something.   Genessaret—vacation destination for the tired master and his exhausted disciples!

But that’s not how things turned out. No, it appears they must’ve stuck pretty close to the shoreline, sailing past all these places where they’d been doing all that ministry.  And they must’ve taken their time getting there, too, because it says that “many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them,” so that by the time Jesus and his family of faithful followers went ashore, they found a great crowd awaiting them there.  Now I don’t know about you, but if I were one of those disciples, I might’ve been, well, disappointed to say the least.  Probably more like exasperated.  I mean, this was supposed to be a getaway!  They really needed this.  The one thing they didn’t need was to be sacked with the burden of more people requiring more ministry.  Things had gotten so bad that they hadn’t even had time to eat; their inner resources must’ve been stretched pretty thin.  They were trying to get away to recharge themselves.  This trip was about self-care,not about more mercy for the multitudes.  The multitudes had gotten everything Jesus and his followers had to give.  What a total bummer to find that, now, when their wells were completely dry, the thirsty hoard was there at Genessaret, demanding more!   It must’ve seemed an impossible situation.  

But that’s pretty much the nature of engaging God’s mission in the world.  The level of need in our human race is so great that, well, it’s impossible to ever meet it all.  [Play “Mission Impossible” Theme from 2 seconds to 28 seconds, fading from 24-28]  As I was about to say…it’d be easy to think of God’s mission in the world as “Mission Impossible.”   For anyone who may not know, “Mission Impossible” was originally a TV show from the 1960’s, where a team of government agents specialized in carrying out impossible tasks.  We just heard the music form that TV show.  In any case, a key feature of the show was that, at the start of each episode, the leader of the Mission Impossible Team, Jim Phelps, would open a manila envelope with photos in it, and he’d listen to a tape recording that would lay out the details of the mission.  The voice on the tape would always culminate with the summary, “Your mission, Jim, if you decide to accept it, is to…blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”  The voice on the tape would then say, “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”  Of course, the tape would always be enveloped in a cloud of smoke, and then Jim and his team of specially-gifted people would go and take on the impossible mission, whatever it was…each of them playing some part, big or little, to get the job done—in less than an hour, if you count commercial breaks.   

In Baptism, we find that in Christ, God has made redeeming us the object of his mission.  In baptism we find that, through Christ God has forgiven our sins, and claimed us to be his own now and forever--no matter what we do or don’t do.  And in baptism, we also find that God has called us to follow Christ, by engaging God’s continued mission to the rest of the world.   It’d be easy for us to see that mission asMission Impossible.  After all, as those first disciples found, the need is bottomless.  It never ends.  At any time, in any place, whether or not it lines up with what we might need, we can encounter grieving people, people in need of help or healing, people who seem lost or confused or ignorant, people who are hungry or homeless or lonely or addicted or bored or tired or…the list goes on and on and on, doesn’t it?   Once you’re tuned in to the need, as sooner or later those who follow Jesus tend to get tuned in, you can’t look anywhere without seeing it.   It’s overwhelming!  And it can be very, very draining.   Some of the folks who’ve been part of Rejoice for quite a while now know just how draining it can be!  There’s always more that needs to be done around here, right?  And it seems like there’s never enough of us to do it all!   No, it just seems impossible!  And yet, it amazes me to see that somehow…somehow, what needs to get done, gets done. 

[11:00]  Quite a few of our young people are heading out of town this week for a trip to New Orleans for the National Youth Gathering.  I hope this will be a great time for you…a fun time…a time for you to get some R&R and to make some new friends and to strengthen some existing friendships.  Just the fact that you’ll be away from home, staying in a nice hotel, in a place associated with good times and good music should give you a chance for some rest and renewal.  After all, this week, mom or dad can’t say, “Clean your room, or would you take out the trash?”  Nobody can ask you clear the table after dinner, or to take the clean dishes from the dishwasher and to lift them up, all the way into the kitchen cupboards.   You’ll be in a place where, with 37,000 other Lutheran Youth from across the country, with adult sponsors to care for you, and where everything has been set up to give you a rich and entertaining and meaningful experience together.  So, I hope you’ll relax and enjoy this trip together.  I hope you’ll also remember that you are part of Jesus’ mission team…that the Spirit of Jesus lives in you, and that throughout this week, you’re bound to encounter folks who need something of what the Jesus in you has to offer.   In fact, to help you remember this, each day this week, you’ll receive a manila envelope with some little mission that you can do…if you decide to accept it.  As is always the case with members of God’s mission team, it will be your choice as to whether or not to live out your calling by doing that mission task.  God will still love you and claim you as his own, whatever you decide. 

It’d be easy for us to get overwhelmed by the vast amount of need we’re faced with…to just throw up our hands and say, “What’s the use?  It’s impossible!”  But I want to suggest that being on God’s Mission Team doesn’t make us part of a Mission Impossible team.   Because it’s God’s Mission team we’re on.  And with God, all things are possible.   We may or may not feel up to the task of whatever it is that needs to be done.  But whether or not we feel up to it, God is up to the task.  In fact, God has this way of taking our weakness, and making his power and presence known through it.  As we face what might seem to us to be the impossible, we do so with God’s promise that his grace is sufficient for us.  That it’s not what we have to offer that matters, but rather what God has to offer through us.  And we can trust that, even if we’re completely tapped out, as Jesus’ original disciples were when they arrived at Genassaret, somehow, God in Christ will step into the breach and take care of things, in his own way,without depending on us. 

So, with God, we’re not part of a Mission Impossible team. We’re part of a Mission Possible team.   Each of us are members of that team; each of us has our own gifts and abilities that we can share as part of that team.  We may not feel we have much to offer; we may not feel we have anything to offer, but as part of God’s Mission Possible team, whatever we can offer, God takes it and uses it for good.   That’s part of what it means to be baptized…to be God’s people, in the world. 

Even little Emily, who will be/was baptized today, has gifts to offer as part of the team.  She’s not able to offer them just yet; it may be years before we even know what they are.  But those gifts are there, Iguarantee you.  In first Corinthians 12, it says that “in the one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body”—and that each member of the body has been given gifts by that same one Spirit.  So, as Emily grows, it will be our task as a faith community to help her to discover and unwrap those gifts…and then to help her learn how to use her gifts…as part of God’s mission team.  Even as it’s the task of each of us whoare grown to develop and use whatever gifts we’ve been given to serve as part of the mission team.  The more of us who do that, the more effective God’s mission team becomes.  You know, if you consider that God’s mission team now encompasses vast numbers of people all over the world, you begin to see that, while whatever gifts we have to offer may just seem like a drop in the ocean, the ocean of the global community of God’s people is made up of countless drops—maybe even enough to generate some very big, very powerful waves.  

But let’s not minimize it.  The need in our world for compassion is huge.  As members of God’s mission team, we can expect to have our resources stretched and depleted, to the point of exasperation…to the point of exhaustion, at times.  The need is just so great.  But being part of God’s mission team also means we are those among whom and through whom the Lord Jesus Christ is present and at work in the world.  His love and compassion are inexhaustible.  He has the capacity to give and to give and to keep on giving—even when we’re all tapped out.  His giving goes as far as the cross and the grave…and beyond.  What is impossible for us, for him is possible.  And, as members of his team, even the littlest thing we can give is something he can use to do great things!

Text:  Mark 6:1-13

THE MINISTRY MANUAL

The mid-level manager was leaving the office late one evening, when he came upon the company’s CEO, who was standing with a piece of paper in his hand, at the reception desk just outside of his office.  “Oh good, you can probably help me,” said the CEO.  “This is a very sensitive document.  My secretary’s gone for the day, and I can’t figure out how to get this thing to work.”  He pointed to a document shredder next to the secretary’s desk.  The manager eagerly responded “You bet!”  He turned on the machine, took the CEO’s paper, inserted it, and fed it into the machine.  “Excellent!  Thank you,” said the CEO as the paper disappeared into the machine.  “I just need one copy….” 

Ouch!  I guess that’s one instance where it might’ve been good if that CEO had simply found the manual attached to the outside of that machine.    Of course, not everyone takes the time to read the manual, even when it’s provided for them.   In today’s reading from Mark, the gospel writer appears to be giving us a sort of ‘manual on Christian ministry’.   At least I suspect that’s how the Christians whooriginally read this gospel may have viewed it.  Early Christian communities didn’t see themselves the way many churches today seem to see themselves—as “kind of retail outlets for Christianity.”   I heard just this past week about a church that’s got a drive thru—folks can just pull up, grab some religious material, and head on down the road.  Early Christian churches saw themselves as being set apart by Godbe a markedly different kind of community, distinct from the world around them.  And the one main distinguishing feature they had, was that they engaged in acts of Christ-like, loving service…they engaged in what’s known as ministry.  We too can see ourselves as a community set apart—as a community of people specially-ordained by God to do works of ministry, or to serve people, in the name of Christ.  So today, I’m going to invite you to read this text with me through that lense…as a sort manual that spells out for us some of the key dynamics involved with doing Christian ministry. 

Mark chapter 6 starts out with Jesus showing up in his hometown on the sabbath, to minister to people in the synagogue there as he had in communities all along the sea of Galilee.  But Jesus finds that the reaction of the folks in his hometown is, well, not exactly receptive. Reading between the lines, what it appears they were saying was, “Where does Jesus get off acting this way?  He’s no different from any of us.  We’ve known him since he was a kid! Heck—his family still lives here!  And check it out…do ya remember?  He was just a carpenter!”   It says that those hometown folks took offense at Jesus for his attempts to minister among them. I guess you could call this “Ministry Dynamics, chapter one:  Familiarity Breeds Contempt.”  When people feel like they know us too well, they may not be prone to take us very seriously.  And so, it can be hard to do effective ministry with those who know us well. I get to experience this all the time with my family.  They see me at my worst…they’ve seen me when I’mimpatient, when I’m tired, when I’m angry, when I’m walking around the house in a pair of shorts with my big gut hanging out.   If I really think about it, it’s kind of amazing that my family can stand to sit here Sunday after Sunday, listening to me!  If we’re looking at ministering to the people who know how badly we can stink, we’re looking at a real challenge.  And the point seems to be that we probably shouldn’t expect a whole lot.    Even the Lord Jesus, we’re told, could only heal a few sick people when he tried to minister to his home crowd.  He did try though.  And no doubt those few who he healed were prettyglad that he did.  So, go ahead, minister to your family, to your friends, to those who know you well.  They may or may not appreciate your efforts, but it’s still worth the effort; you probably shouldn’t set the bar too high for yourself though. 

Now, you’d think Jesus might get discouraged by this experience, but he doesn’t.  He simply moves on elsewhere, to other towns.  And, it says, he started at this point to send his closest followers out, in pairs, to minister in his name.  And here, it seems to me, is chapter 2 of our Ministry Manual:  a chapter on “Team Ministry.”  The norm for Christian ministry is to serve together in teams.  None of this “Lone Ranger” stuff for us Christians.  Come to think of it, even the Lone Ranger had Tonto!   If you aren’t old enough to remember the Lone Ranger, he was like this 1950’s, black-and-white TV, masked version of Walker, Texas Ranger, who went around in the old west stopping bad guys, just like Chuck Norris’ character Walker, only without the martial arts. Anyway, the Lone Ranger had this Indian sidekick named Tonto, and if I recall correctly, there were those episodes where, if Tonto hadn’t come to the rescue, the Lone Ranger would’ve been finished off by some bad guys who got the upper hand on him.   When we’re engaged in the work of ministry, we’re not necessarily going to be up against bad guys—although that certainly can happen.   But we can find ourselves facing some pretty draining, even overwhelming situations.   After all, there are a lot of people all around us, with some pretty serious hurts and problems.  People fighting life-and-death battles with devastating illness.  People trying to cope with financial disaster.   People seeking shelter from abusive relationships.  All kinds of people who are struggling with a world of grief.   If we’re serious about caring for such people, we really don’t want to be trying to do it all by ourself.  We need each other’s support.  And, since we’re human, we also need accountability.   That’s why our Stephen ministers meet together on a regular basis, for supervision.  Stephen Ministry is a proven, effective ministry that many have benefitted from.  The Stephen ministry model recognizes that, if you’re going to be in this ministry thing for the long haul—either with a single care receiver, or with several of them, you need the wisdom and emotional support of others who care.    Stephen ministers are folks who have special gifts for ministry; they receive 50 hours of initial training, along with ongoing continuing ed., to equip them so they can walk in caring and supportive ways with people who are going through crisis or transition.  As members of the body of Christ, we don’t all have to be Stephen Ministers; we don’t all have to be formally trained to be equipped to minister, on some level, to people in need of caring help.  We don’t all need formal training, but it’s not a bad idea, though, for us to pay some attention to the manual for Christian ministry. And the manual seems to clearly lay it out for us here:  effective ministry is something we Christians do, not on our own, but together.  

Another word for ministry is service.  Here at Rejoice there’s a growing variety of kinds of service we can engage in.  That’s why we have all of these ministry teams.  Some of them aren’t called ‘ministry teams’. They may be called committees, or something else, but that’s what they are…ministry teams.  Any time we Christians come together to serve, we’re doing ministry.  Some of us do Educationalministry, some do Youth ministry.  Some of us work together to do Worship and Music Ministry.  Others do outreach ministry; some do a ministry of Fellowship.  Still others do ministry by working together tocare for and maintain our church property.  I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful for all of these forms of ministry.   All of them play a vital role in making this church what it is—a faith community that’s been set apart by God to do all kinds of acts of Christ-like, loving service.  The folks among us who help keep the lawn mowed, or who clean the building, are just as necessary as those who serve together to support our worship life…or those who minister to our youth.   What’s crucial is that we all see ourselves as having some ministry role…and that we discover and use our gifts to serve together however we can.   People don’t usually stick around Rejoice very long without finding some way to serve.  If you haven’t found yours yet, just hang on a bit…it could well be that we simply haven’t started developing yet the ministry role that you’re most qualified for.   For instance, we’ve just started looking for folks to serve in the area of cultivating Rejoice’s visibility in the community.   We’re also in the process of developing a Middle School After School Care program a day or two a week.  If we pull that off, hopefully starting this fall, there’ll be a number of new ways to serve.  I have a vision of someone ministering by helping us find ways to become a greener church—to manage our property and resources in ways that’re consistent with caring for God’s creation. .  And then there’s always a need for those who want to start new, specialized ministries—a ministry to people recovering from divorce, for instance.  Or support and networking groups for unemployed people…or grief support groups, or…well, you name it.  If you want to start up a new ministry here at Rejoice, I’d say the door is pretty wide open.  What I’ll usually say is that, if you can find 2-4 others who share a vision for that ministry with you, go for it!   The Lord Jesus started out with ministry teams of two, but experience has shown me that, in our time and culture, at least 3 people are usually required to get something going and keep it going.  We’ve all got so much going on these days, and so at least three are needed--four or five is even better.  That way, if one or two get sick or too busy with other stuff for while, or if somebody has to drop out, there’s still enough people-resources to keep things moving forward.  Ministry teams, in our context, probably should be bigger than two. 

And that leads to the next chapter of the Ministry Manual we find in our gospel today:  “Cultural context.”  Effective Christian ministers take seriously the context that they’re working in.   They pay attention to what’s been going on and to what is going on.  Jesus sent out his ministry teams, and he gave them some pretty specific instructions.  He told them to take nothing for their journey except a staff…no food,no luggage, no money, just one set of clothes.   At the time that this gospel was written, there were a lot of these itinerant teachers travelling throughout the Greco-Roman world, teachers who were perceivedas having a calling from God to do what they were doing.  As a sign of their divine calling, they carried a staff—kind of like wearing a clergy collar today, I guess.  Another sign of their calling from God was their willingness to forsake worldly possessions and to trust in God’s providence.   So, in that cultural context, for Jesus’ followers to go about with what might be seen as an excess of clothing, with wallets full of money, relying on their own planning instead of trusting in God to provide, that would’ve almost certainly repelled many of the folks they encountered.  Also, in that time, the household was the primary unit of the social order; communities were organized into hierarchical households, with the heads of households in charge of everybody associated with their household.  By depending on the hospitality of local households, Jesus’ disciples would be strategically placed, right where they’d need to be if they were going to get a foothold in the community.  Jesus’ instructions took seriously the cultural setting where his disciples would be going to minister. 

We do well when we take seriously the perceptions and experiences of the folks we hope to serve.  For instance, it’d probably be a bad idea in our context to try to start a TV ministry where the preacher constantly solicits money in return for prayers. Or, it’d be a bad idea to start getting overtly political along partisan lines.   Or to go on a moral crusade that condemns certain behaviors with a level of certaintythat not many of the folks around us these days share.  These are the kinds of things Christians in our culture have been doing for some time—things that have soured more and more people to the church.  No, in our culture, where so many pay excessive attention to image and spin, if we want to effectively reach and touch the lives of many people, we’d do much better to simply focus on being authentic…authentic in our caring, and true to what’s at the heart of our belief and our experience with God.    We’d do well to be authentic to the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we’re sent to minister.

And that leads us right to the final chapter in our ministry manual today…to Jesus Christ himself, who not only sends us forth to minister, but who gives us the authority we need to minister.   Another way to understand authority is “power.”  It says the Lord gave his original ministry teams he sent out “authority over unclean spirits.”  It seems the Lord knew that his followers would inevitably encounter challenges to what they were trying to do.  There are unclean, destructive spiritual forces at work in our world.  They’re even at work in our own lives sometimes.  Forces that can impede us, in any number of ways.  Forces that can discourage us, that can stir up our anxieties…forces that can even paralyze us with fear, or with hatred, or self-pity.  So, we need power—spiritual power, power to stand up to those challenges,whatever they may look like, so that we can keep moving forward together in ministry.  And our Lord Jesus Christ has given us the power we need to stand strong and to keep on moving.

Another response to desperation is kind of the opposite of doing nothing.  It’s trying to grab control of whatever we think we might be able to control.  We may or may not be able to do anything to change our circumstances.  But the anxiety over the situation can be so consuming that we can feel driven to get a handle on whatever we can.  You know: “If I just throw enough money at the problem, or if I can only force that person to change, it’ll all go away.”  Or, “This must’ve happened because I haven’t taken charge enough in my life.  So I’m going to take charge now, and things will get better.”  Reacting in these anxious ways, though, can wreak havoc, not only on our own life, but on the people around us.  In desperate situations, it often doesn’t take much to make things even worse if we’re not careful.  And we may see ourself as well-meaning, as taking responsibility.  But others may experience us as something of a control freak.  That, in turn, can lead us to alienate ourself from the very folks we need to support us as we try to negotiate a very difficult leg of life’s journey.

What about distraction?   That’s one of my favorite ways to cope.  I mean, isn’t it good to find ways to distract ourself when things become too overwhelming?   Studies on managing stress have shown that distraction is a helpful way to cope with distressing circumstances.  It’s even been suggested that, before the dawn of medicine, that’s the role that witch doctors served.  Back in the days before there were medications to relieve pain, if somebody got seriously injured or ill, or even if they were delivering a baby, the witch doctor, or shaman, would show up in the person’s hut or tent, and they’d begin tochant and wave feathers and rattle rattles and dance up a storm.   Watching somebody dressed up in a coyote skin, or with a painted body wearing bones in their nose dance around and make noise like that for awhile, they think, may have actually provided enough distraction to help the patient make it through the worst of their situation.  Today we don’t need witch doctors.  We have endless ways to distract ourselves.   There’s hundreds of channels of TV…there’s movies, video games, the internet--complete with sites like MySpace and Facebook, and a whole multitude of very distracting things to see or do oneach of these.  Now, I don’t Facebook, or Myspace, or twitter, or anything else like that..  It’s not that I’m opposed to it. I just don’t have time as it is to deal with all the emails I get…so I’m not about to open myself up to the social networking can of worms too.    But I’m fascinated to hear about the kinds of things people are doing who are social networking online.   I learned the other day that there’s actually aFacebook farming community—that you can develop your own virtual farm online, complete with vast virtual acreages, virtual crops and virtual livestock.   Makes me wonder what’s next—virtual housekeeping?  “Did you clean your room yet, Suzie?”  “Yes mom—I sure did! (on my Facebook account).”  “Jimmie, did you take a shower?”  “Yes mom.”  “Did you brush your teeth?”  “Yes mom.”  Nothing like being able to Facebook your way through life!  

Distractions do have a place in helping us deal with the difficult passages we sometimes have to make in life.  But in a culture like ours that’s teeming with distractions, we can easily become addicted to them, burning up time--way more of the precious time we have on this earth than we ever intended.   I mean, somehow I doubt any of us are going to be on our deathbed, looking back over our life, saying, “Well, at least I had a really great Facebook homepage!”  

Hopefully, at some point, we come to see that there’s way more to life than what social networking, virtual reality games, dramatic tv series or even the best action or fantasy movies in 3-D with dolby surround sound can offer us.   As people who’ve been claimed and called by God to live and walk in a relationship with him for all eternity, hopefully, we can begin to not only live in anticipation of that eternal relationship—but hopefully we can experience its benefits.  

In our gospel today, two pretty desperate people found that, in One named Jesus, they were able to do just that.  One of them, a synagogue leader known as Jairus, had somehow come to hear of—perhaps even witnessed for himself, the amazing signs of God’s power and presence being demonstrated by Jesus. And so when he found himself in desperate straights, that’s where Jairus turned—to Jesus.  Jairus’ 12 year-old daughter fell critically ill, you see…so ill she was thought to be at death’s door.  This is every parent’s nightmare!   Those of us who are parents, or who have been parents, can maybe imagine something of the distress level this father must have been bearing.   To raise a daughter, and to have raised this girl just to the point of reaching womanhood--with all the promise that that entails, how crushing it would’ve been.  Add that to the fact that Jairus was a community leader, a leader of the synagogue—someone who maybe hadn’t taken the time to know and appreciate his daughteras he otherwise might have, and you can maybe see why he came so pathetically, as it says, falling at Jesus’ feet, repeatedly begging him to please use his healing power from God that he’d demonstrated so often on behalf of others. 

The other desperate person in our gospel, a woman who, we’re told, had been through a lot of grief for a long, long time, also found herself turning to Jesus.  She had some unknown condition that causedchronic bleeding And she’d lived with this condition for twelve years.   Twelve years is a long time to be losing blood—think of how weak she must have been much of the time.  Plus, in that time and culture, a woman who was known to be bleeding had to stay separated, to keep away from everyone, so as to avoid ritually contaminating others in the community.  So, she either would’ve had to stay home, cooped up a lot of the time, or else she’d have to conceal her condition, and just hope nobody would find out.  But it says she’d spent everything she had in the care of many doctors—kind of the take control response, right?  And it’d just made things worse it said.  Not only that, but that it likely meant that too many people knew of her situation.   It’s probable that this woman simply stayed home and lived a very lonely existence.  At this point a pretty miserable existence too, as she was now completely broke from paying all those doctors.   Somehow though, we’re told, she’d heard of Jesus.   And it appears she decided to take advantage of the crowd that was mobbing all around him so she could come and seek what she believed Jesus had to offer her.   She knew she needed what Jesus had to offer, but she alsoknew she was risking the outrage of her community—maybe even her place in her community, by coming out in public like this while blood was flowing from her body.   And so furtively, from the midst of the crowd, she reached out her hand, trusting that a mere touch to Jesus’ cloak would do what she needed to be done.    

Now, check it out.  In both of these instances, the desperate people took action.   They didn’t respond to their situation by doing nothing.  But they also didn’t respond by trying to take control of everything and everyone around them.  Neither did they respond by simply distracting themselves.    Distractions, after all, only go so far. They don’t change anything, except maybe the way we feel, and that only for a little while.  No, both of these desperate individuals responded to their circumstances with faith—faith in the One we’ve come to know as Jesus Christ the Son of God.  As we undoubtedly have, they’d bothheard things about Jesus—perhaps, as some of us have, one of them had even witnessed some things about Jesus for himself.  Things that inspired them to believe that the eternal God whose power and grace are great beyond our comprehension, was present and at work in Jesus. And they both acted in faith that this Jesus not only could help them, but that he would help them.  And that belief, that faith they both had in the power and mercy of God at work in Jesus changed everything for them!

Now I can’t guarantee you that having faith in Christ will protect you and your loved ones from all harm.   As a pastor, I’ve seen many instances where, inexplicably, people with serious illnesses have beenhealed, and even where those at death’s door have been brought back to the land of the living.   But I’ve also seen too many instances of those whose illnesses have continued, and I’ve buried and done memorial services for plenty of others.  If we’re looking for some kind of all-inclusive “by” from life’s misfortunes, if we’re grasping for some type of magical, mystical deliverance from all the really bad stuffthat can come down on us, I don’t know of any place to steer you—including faith in Christ.   If God did work that way, we probably wouldn’t call it “faith.”  If every single time we called on Christ’s name, whatever nastiness we’re facing just melted away, well, for one thing, the scientists would do lots of studies, and they’d all be going—yep, go ahead and call on Christ…that’s the way to deal with it wheneverbad stuff happens to you.   But God doesn’t operate like that.   I don’t know why—I’m just human, so I can’t come close to figuring out a lot of things about God.  But from what God has revealed about himself to us in Jesus Christ, it does appear that God wants us to have a faith relationship with him.  That is, God wants us to turn to him and to put our trust in him—to trust in God above all else.  And to help us to do that, in Jesus God has made it clear that he’s worthy of our trust.   After all, who else or what else do you know of that has demonstrated the level of commitment to us god in Christ has by willingly suffering and dying on a cross for us? 

Faith in Christ isn’t a magic charm. God is too great and too wise to jump through the hoops that we humans want him to jump through.   But if you’re asking, “Well, then why have faith?  What’s the point?”… let’s put it this way:  operating out of a belief in goodness and power and presence of God that’s been demonstrated for us in Jesus Christ can lift us out of desperation.  Turning to God for help may or may not remove our desperate circumstances…it may, but it may not.  But, for instance, many of us have found time and again that turning to Christ by seeking the prayers and comfort and support of the Christian community can make all the difference in how we weather those particularly bad storms that can and do blow in and dump on us.   Many of us have found that we can find peace and strength and, yes—even healing and life, by cultivating a daily walk with God, by coming to God daily with all of our struggles, by seeking the love and light and power of God to sustain us.  There’s a reason that, across the centuries, Jesus has come to be known as “savior.”  It’s because, in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine, Jesus saves people.  

Sooner or later, we’re likely to find ourselves in desperate circumstances.   That seems to be part of our human condition.  If it’s not already happening to us right now, sooner or later, something’s going to mess up our plans, to pull the rug out from under us…something’s to get us to say, “Oh no!  What am I gonna do now?”   When that happens, we can respond to it in all kinds of different ways.  One of those ways—the way I’m commending to you today, is faith.   Faith in Jesus, who came among us and demonstrated the willingness and ability of God to help us in our human condition.  Faith in Jesus, in whom the love of God for us was poured out to the point of death…Faith in Jesus, through whom the power of God over death was displayed.   I commend to you faith in Jesus, who saves us. 

It’s been said that there are two different kinds of people in the world, those who divide everything into two different kinds, and those who don’t.   Actually, I have an idea there’s something deeply human about thinking and talking about things in twos.  There’s Mickey and Minnie, Donald and Daisy, Frick and Frack, TweedleDee and Tweedledum.  There’s left and right, up and down, fast and slow, big and little.  The National League and the American league.   You and me, he and she, us and them.  My favorite theologian, Martin Luther, loved to consider the tensions that exist in life, tensions between pairsthat seem to be polar opposites--but that can yet both be equally true.  You know, like that old saying, “Look before you leap,” and that other old saying, “He who hesitates is lost.”  So which is it?  Should I take the time to look before I do something?  Or, should I jump right in so I don’t lose out?  The correct answer is probably…yes.   Both, to some degree, depending on the circumstances.   If we take them seriously, the contradictions between pairs that seem to be at two different poles often have something to teach us.

Our gospel today contains two parables.  See what I mean?  A pair of parables!  Each of these two parables contains apparent contradictions.   First—some background.  A major focus of Mark’s gospel is on the coming reign of God, or as many Bible translations put it, the kingdom of God.  Jesus’ mission seems to be largely about demonstrating that God’s reign is breaking into the world.  Jesus confronts and prevails over sickness of every kind, over evil demonic forces, even over death.  He battles and triumphs over all the things that oppress individuals and their communities.   And as Mark’s gospel portrays it for us, all while Jesus does this, he teaches his followers, preparing them to pick up where he leaves off—preparing them to continue his mission. And a key way he chose to prepare them for this was by telling parables about the kingdom of God, parables such as the two in our gospel today.   So, we can probably best understand these parables as Jesus’ attempt to engage his disciples—and those who would come after them, with this ongoing mission of his.  Oh--and one more thing to bear in mind.  The nature of Jesus’ parables is that, rather than providing straightforward answers, they draw us in byraising questions--questions for us to wrestle with.

The first of these two parables told by the Lord Jesus, is the parable of a guy who scatters seed and who then, without any effort or understanding on his part, simply watches it grow, until, when the grain is ripe, he harvests it.  Okay, let’s say the seed that sprouts and develops into grain represents God’s will, God’s purpose being accomplished in the world, or, as Jesus himself put it, the kingdom of God.  And we could say the sower in this parable is God; after all, God is the One who’s usually associated with reaping a harvest when agricultural metaphors like this are used.  But, if the sower is God, then you kind of have to ask, why doesn’t God know how things are happening?  Is God lacking in understanding about the ways that his will is accomplished in the world? That doesn’t seem to fit!   Okay, so let’s say the sower in the parable represents a human actor—say you or me, let’s say it’s some human being, who we could easily say is ignorant about the ‘how’ of God’s will being done. But then, how can we reconcile that with being the one who reaps the harvest, or the benefit, at the end of the parable?   Humans aren’t supposed to be the ones who do this.   So, I don’t know about you, but to me, the question this parable raises is, “When it comes to the unfolding of God’s kingdom, or God’s will being done in the world, who’s work is it that matters—is it ours, or God’s?” 

Maybe you’ve noticed, but even in a relatively small church community like ours, there’s a lot of activity and effort.  There’s our youth and children’s ministries, like our three active youth groups, and our confirmation ministry, and Kids of the Kingdom, and Kids Church, and Vacation Bible School.  There’s our ministries of care and concern that assist people going through times of crisis or transition, like our Prayer Team, our Stephen Ministry and our TLC ministry.  There’s outreach ministries that seek to serve the poor in our community, such as our annual “Clothe a Child” project that’s about to get underway.   There’s a variety of ways to serve in support of our worship life…two different worship services every week, each one requiring a significant amount of time and effort, by a pretty good number of people.  Now that we’re in our new facility, we’re discovering that a multitude of other avenues of service are required; we need folks to help keep the lawn mowed and the facilities clean and maintained, for instance.   And to oversee and administer all of this, we also need a pretty good team of leaders to be on task, on a regular basis.   A church like Rejoice, a smaller church that offers this volume of ministry, operates on the time and energy and effort of more than just a few people.   And, considering this, I have to say that I have no idea how it all materializes.  I mean, virtually everyone I know who’s active here has a lot going on in their life—careers to pursue, kids’ busy schedules to manage, households to stay on top of, personal struggles to cope with, extended family to care for, or often, some combination of these.  How anyone—let alone so many of us, find the time and energy to put into doing church on the level we do church here at Rejoice, on top of everything else they have to do, is beyond me! 

“The seed sprouts and grows, he does not know how; the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head,” is the way Jesus describes the growth of the kingdom in his parable.  Basically, it just happens…once the seed is scattered, it mysteriously grows and develops.  To me, Jesus seems as if he could be saying, “From your point of view, that’s simply the way God’s kingdom works.”   It’s beyond our comprehension.   As long as you remember that it’s God’s kingdom, God’s plans and purposes that are unfolding, Jesus may be telling us, we don’t have to understand it. God does God’s part—through the work of the Spirit sowing the seeds of the gospel that produces faith; we do our part—living out that faith in the gospel.  And in some way that we’re not able to grasp, thekingdom comes, God’s will is done.  But what about the end—the reaping?  Is it God or us who will reap the benefits of this growth of the kingdom of God that mysteriously occurs?  What if…what if it’s not one or the other?  What if Jesus parable is intentionally obscure on this?  What if it’s both God and us who benefit as God’s kingdom is fulfilled?  

This first parable can help us to focus on the partnership we share with God—a partnership in carrying out God’s mission in the world.  A partnership that, as a result of what God in Christ has done for us on the cross, grows and produces fruit.  A partnership so deep that it’s hard to distinguish between who is actually doing what.  A partnership that’s expressed in the Bible by referring to us, the church, the community of the baptized, as “the body of Christ”—with Christ as the head of the body, and each of us the various pats of the body, each with our own function.   

Then there’s that second parable in our gospel.  “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” Jesus says, “a mustard seed which, when sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds.”    Wait a minute!  A mustard seed?  Why would anyone sow a mustard seed?”  That’s what someone might well ask who lives in a part of the world where mustard plants grow.   Everyone knows there’s two kinds of plants—beneficial plants, and weeds, right?  Mustard bushes are pretty much weeds--giant weeds. And so right at the outset, the very premise of this parable raises the issue:  why would anyone want to sowa mustard seed?  Mustard bushes, it seems, have a way of growing up and taking over everything around them.   [pick up and show large thistle plant]  To sow a mustard seed would be like sowing a thistle seed!   If I caught somebody coming in my yard planting even one of these things, I’d probably be inclined to go punch ‘em in the nose!  These are nasty weeds—they’ve got a jillion tiny little stickers. And they’re weeds that get big real quick, and that multiply just as fast, if you don’t stop ‘em!  If you let them grow to full maturity, they have these purple flowers at the top—purple flowers that don’t fool anyone who’s ever tried to handle one with bare hands.  This has been the worst year for thistles I can remember.  We don’t spray for weeds in our yard, so we’ve spent a lot of time this spring pulling thistles out by hand.  You have to use a weed pulling tool, or at least a screwdriver to dig them up, because if you don’t get ‘em by the roots, they grow right back—often worse than before!  Mustard bushes aren’t native to this part of the world, but if they were, I think that’s how we’d view them—much like thistles.  If the kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed that, when planted, grows into a mustard bush, the first thing you have to say is, “Man!  God’s kingdom sure doesn’t start out as a very desirable thing!  In fact, it starts out as something pretty darned undesirable! ”  

But, I suspect, that’s what Jesus wants us to know…that God does like to start out with things that aren’t very appealing.  God has a way of taking things that are small, distasteful, or perhaps evenrepulsive, and turning them into something unimaginably great.  Like a teenaged girl who got pregnant out of wedlock…who became the mother of our Lord.  Or like the smelly fishermen who left their nets to become Jesus’ first followers.  Or like the despicable tax collectors and the prostitutes who also came to be associated with him.  Or like…Jesus’ horrible suffering and death, nailed to a cross.  Out of theinsignificant, the undesirable, even the revolting, God has a way of producing amazing--even really big results.  So, I don’t know—does this maybe say something about being quick to judge or back awaywhen we encounter those people or experiences that appear to us to be worthless, or unpleasant or maybe even dreadful?   These may be the very people or experiences or qualities that God somehow wants to transform into something really valuable—something crucial for accomplishing his plans and purpose in the world. 

“Yet, when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”  You may look at it differently, but the way I’ve come to see this is that, in spite of its humble or even revolting origins, when God’s kingdom unfolds in a particular place and time, it has a way of providing…for all kinds of people.   When God’s mission in the world is being fulfilled, many who in some way can’t fend for themselves, will find a place to land.  Many find a community of hospitality and care—a community that can serve some of their most basic needs.   This is a congregation that, although it spent a decade meeting and worshipping in unattractive settings, somehow developed a deep sense of community.  And out of that community, a number of growing branches of ministry have sprung forth.   Now that we’ve developed as we have, we’re finding quite a number of folks flocking to us.   And, it appears that we’re on the verge of sprouting anew branch or two of ministry for folks to land on—for instance, a Middle School After School Care program is now in the works.  Of course, new branches like this will undoubtedly stretch our resources and raise our risks.  But I want to suggest that we can find some assurance in this parable of our Lord’s.  Asssurance that this is the way things are supposed to go.   What was once small, even undesirable to many, is now growing, and it’s becoming more and more capable of attracting many.   This is the way God’s kingdom works.  Just as the seed of a crucified savior who was sown into the ground has now grown into a global communion of believers, so we can look for what was once the little bitty seed of a faith community to continue to grow, into something that will benefit many. 

When it comes to accomplishing God’s will, both God’s work and ours matter…because God is at work in and among us.  As each of us do our part in this partnership, we both benefit.   And the way God’s kingdom works, the insignificant and undesirable have a way of ending up being beneficial—beneficial not just to us, but to many.   We humans do like to think in two’s, don’t we?  Only we tend to pit pairs of things against each other.   God, on the other hand, prefers to join pairs of completely different things together.   Bread and wine, body and blood.   Broken sinners, forgiven saints.   Earthly mortals, partners in a divine mission. 

Thanks be to God!  

Text:  John 3:1-17

BORN OF THE SPIRIT

“Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”  That’s the question Jesus asked Nicodemus, a highly respected religious authority and member of the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem.  Nicodemus had showed up one night to find out for himself what this Jesus was up to.   He knew God must be working in and through Jesus… for, as he said, no one could do the things Jesus did apart from the presence of God.   But right off the bat, Nicodemus couldn’t seem to grasp anything Jesus had to say.  The problem appears to have been that Nicodemus’ ideas or concepts of God were, well, different from what Jesus was expressing.  And it was apparently hard for him to let go of what he thought he knew so he could get what Jesus was saying. 

There are always those of us who think they have God all figured out, right?   “God?  Sure I know God!  I read my Bible…I’ve spent my life in the Church…I can tell you all about God!”   The problem with that is, no matter how great or deep our knowledge of God is, we can’t even come close to comprehending all there is to comprehend about God.   I mean, it is God we’re talking about here!   A being so immensely great that creating the universe is do-able!  For all we know, there are an infinite number of other universes God has created.  What can we humans really know about such a being?   “Well,” you might say, “we know what the Bible tells us about God—and that’s plenty…66 books-full of knowledge about God, right there in the Bible.” Okay, but which biblical knowledge or image or metaphor for God do you want to go with?   The God who with the power of his voice spoke the heavens and the earth and all of creation into existence, including human beings, both male and female?  Or the God who formed a man out of dust with his own hands, breathed life into his nostrils, and who then, when the man complained of being lonely, took a rib from the man to make a woman for him?    Do you want to go with the God who addressed the prophet Elijah in a “small still voice”?  Or do you prefer the One who debated with Job in the voice of a whirlwind?   Do you want to talk about God as a mighty warrior who rides the wind, or as a shield…or a mighty fortress?  Or do you favor one of the Biblical images that represent God as one of several different kinds of animals…a lion, for instance? Or an eagle?  How about a chicken?  Yep, God as a chicken…it’s in the Bible!  Or maybe you prefer to see God as a jealous husband, or as a farmer scattering seeds…or, as a woman sweeping her home, looking for a lost coin?  Is God sitting on a high and lofty throne, attended by powerful angelic beings, looking for someone else to send to accomplish his will, as we read in our first reading today from Isaiah?  Or, as we read in John’s gospel, does God come among us himself to do stuff, the divine Word dwelling in human flesh? 

When it gets down to it, Nicodemus didn’t really stand a chance.  He was trying to get a handle on something—on someone, that doesn’t seem to come with a single, graspable handle.   He was trying to make sense of what exceeds human sensibilities.  When Jesus asks, “Are you are teacher of Israel and yet you do not know these things?”, I’ve come to see it as more of a rhetorical question.   It appears to me as if what Jesus is really saying to Nicodemus is that, “If you want to know God, here’s where to start:  as a mere human being, you can’t do it by yourself, Nicodemus—even if you are a teacher of Israel. To know God, you’re going to have to be born, not just from a human mother, not just born of the water that comes from a woman’s womb, the amniotic fluid, as we call it today…you’re going to have to be re-born,” Jesus says, “born from above…born of the Spirit.  You’re going to have to have a whole new way, a completely different way of knowing.  And even this a way of knowing is something that you can’t produce on your own.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m a guy who likes to have some measure of control over my own destiny.  I mean, I like to be the one who decides at least the basics of my life—where I’m going to live, what I’m going to do all day, where I’m going to go and the kind of car I’m going to drive to get there.  I like to chose what I’m having for dinner, what I’ll watch on TV, even which comic strips I’m going to read.  So, I’m not crazy about the idea that something as important as knowing and relating with God is outside of my control.  That just doesn’t seem right!  And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus seems to be saying.  “You must be born from above…born of the Spirit,” Jesus said.  And let me tell you what that like:  The wind blows where it chooses…you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”   We don’t have any more control over our ability to relate on a genuine level with God than we had over being born…or over whether or not the wind’s going to blow today!   If we’re going to know and relate with God authentically on any level, Jesus seems to be saying, it’s going to be because God, through his Spirit, somehow blows into our life and makes it happen.

This morning, at the 11:00 service, the Spirit is about to blow/blew into little Daniel Fillgrove’s/  Daniel’s life.   That’s the great thing about baptizing babies…babies remind us of how powerless we are when it comes to the most critical things of our existence.  When we were tiny little people like Daniel, we were totally dependent.  In order to survive from one day to the next, somebody else outside of us and who was much more capable than us had to be looking out for us.  In order for us—along with the rest of the world, to have a saving relationship with God, someone from outside of our world had to be looking out for us.   And the Lord Jesus spelled out for Nicodemus—and for all of us, that in his suffering and death on the cross, that’s exactly what’s happened.    “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Implicit in what Jesus is saying here seems to be that God had a choice.  God could’ve simply condemned this broken world, this world full of arrogant people who think they know everything but who really don’t know enough to save themselves, let alone to save anyone else.  God could either condemn the world…or, God could come to save us in spite of ourselves.  And what God chose was to come among us in Jesus Christ, to save us.  God chose to give us through Christ the gift of eternal life, the promise of forgiveness that allows us to believe that we do have a saving relationship with God…and that we have that relationship not only today, but forever. 

The choice was God’s, Jesus appears to be implying—not ours.   And I’d suggest that the choice is always God’s.  On the surface, it’s going to look/it looked like Daniel’s parents were the ones who made the choice.  But I’m proposing that it’s/it was actually through the Spirit of God at work in Daniel’s parents that God is choosing/chose to claim Daniel through the cleansing water of this baptismal font.  And, I’d propose that as Daniel’s parents fulfill their commitments to bring him to the services of God’s house, and to see that he learns the basics of the Christian faith, that’s the Spirit of God at work in them, to personally lead Daniel into a right relationship with him.   So each of us who were once baptized have found ourselves claimed and cleansed by God…so each of us have been led and are being led by the Spirit into that same right relationship with God. And it’s a relationship that comes, not by the certainty of knowing that we’ve made some choice or done something , but rather it comes through faith in what God has done and is doing for us. 

There’ll always be those who claim to know everything there is to know about God.  Those who insist that they have all the answers—that they’re the ones in control of it all.  Some of them are so certain that they’ll even kill others in God’s name, as we saw happen in the foyer of a church up in Kansas this past week.  An activist knew, you see…he knew that this doctor was an evil person who deserved to be executed.  Never mind that the doctor was a baptized, active member of Reformation Lutheran Church who was actually serving his church during worship.  This activist knew he was evil and he knew he ought to be executed.   And so he took it on himself to be the executioner.  God save us all from that kind of certainty! 

As I read our gospel today, we’re not the ones in control here.  We don’t even have a choice about whether or not we’re going to be right with God—that’s God’s choice.  And it’s a choice God made in his only begotten Son.   A choice to save the wicked and not to condemn…to save not just you and me, but the whole world.  When we’re baptized, the Scriptures say, God connects us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—and to his saving promises in Christ.  So, if we’re baptized, we can trust that somehow, in some way that exceeds our capacity to understand, God’s Spirit has blown into our lives.  Because of that, we can also trust that, in all kinds of mysterious ways, God’s Spirit is present and at work, in and through us, to blow into the lives of many others.  Somehow, we’re coming to see that, it’s not as we execute our sense of justice on the wicked that righteousness and salvation are at work, but that it’s as God’s Spirit works in and among us to represent Christ’s love to the world, that righteousness and salvation happen. 

I don’t know—maybe seeing things this way is a choice that we make.  But I suspect that even the impetus to Christian love…even our willingness to abandon the ways of violence and to do works of Christ-like service, are things that come from outside of us.  Even these things, I have an idea, are simply what follow once we’re born, not just of flesh, but reborn of the Spirit.  Born into the community of the Spirit … a community where we can learn together what it means to follow Christ. 

This “community of the Spirit”…it’s a community of people baptized into the name of a Triune God—the “Holy Trinity” of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—one God who, we say, has been revealed to us in three distinct persons.  How one God can be three persons…it’s something I have yet to hear adequately explained.   Not in a way that makes total sense to me, anyway.  Now, having admitted that, I can see where someone might be going, “What?!  Are you a pastor, and you don’t understand this?”   I guess I’d have to answer, “Yeah, that’s right....me and Nicodemus, we’re sort of peas in a pod.  We’re the kind of people who don’t always get stuff, especially if it defies the kind of logic or ideas we’re used to.”  But I’d also say that there’s a different way of knowing, a way of knowing that, while I can’t explain it very well, allows me to live with and even embrace our Trinitarian way of talking about God.  It’s the kind of knowing that’s come as I’ve experienced this Triune God blowing into my life—and blowing into the lives of many others.  It’s a way of knowing that comes through faith.  Faith, not in this proposition about God or that unquestionable religious tenet…but rather faith in God’s only begotten Son. In some way that I don’t fully intellectually understand, I’ve come, along with so many others, to have this faith--faith in God’s Son, who came, not to condemn, but to save.

Text:  John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

NEVER ALONE

Rick was lonely…incredibly lonely.  You never would’ve known it.   Rick was a freshman at my high school, and as far as I could see, he had his share of friends—a few other guys to hang out with.  Of course, the nature of the friendships he had with these particular fellas was, well interesting.  None of them could open their mouth without dissing at least one of the others.  They had rude names for each other, names they’d use at every opportunity.   And they’d say the most disparaging things to and about each other and other folks, constantly.  I can’t even repeat most of the things they’d utter.  It was done in a sort of kidding way, but if you were on the receiving end, it didn’t usually feel funny; it felt like the put-down it was.   Rick, who was about 6 feet tall, was at least as bad as the other guys he hung with.  In fact, he had a particularly sharp tongue on him.  Most people avoided Rick along with the rest of his crowd, but I’d been laid up the first 6 weeks of freshman year after I gotten hit by a car; pretty much everyone I knew had gotten into their own cliques—cliques that would be hard to penetrate 6 weeks inot the school year, especially by someone like me.  I was this skinny, pale-looking kid hobbling around on crutches, a kid who wasn’t about to win any popularity contests.   For some reason I didn’t understand though, Rick, who in junior high I’d known only in passing, reached out to me.  After a couple of weeks when I was able to get rid of the crutches, he asked me if I wanted to go to the gym during free periods to shot some baskets.  I was surprised and a little bit leery about exposing myself to his cutting comments, but I guess I was feeling isolated enough that I just said, “Yeah, sure.”  I stunk at basketball, but Rick didn’t seem to mind; he’d just give me tips and patiently show me how to make myself useful on the court even though I couldn’t shoot worth anything.   We’d go the gym at least a couple of times a week together.  He’d walk through the hallways to class with me sometimes—very slowly, as I was still learning to use my legs again.  He didn’t seem to mind the pace—or how he must’ve looked walking with this gimpy skinny little guy.   It was one night about a year later that I learned about Rick’s loneliness.  I was fully recovered by thebn, I’d found my way into a group of other friends, and I hadn’t hung out with Rick for quite a while.  But one weekend night when no one else was available, I’d given him a call and we got together and did guy stuff…we watched some basketball, and I remember wrestling with him out in our yard--in the pouring rain.   We went in to dry off, and that’s when Rick suddenly burst into tears.  It was quite a shock to see this big, normally tough and very rude guy crying.  It was even more of a shock to hear what he then said.  “John, I just want to thank you for being my friend.  I really don’t have any friends.  I really appreciate you spending time with me.”   It was then that I realized that you can never tell what’s going on inside people by looking on the surface.  Especially among some folks—big high school guys included, appearances can be very deceiving.

“Now I am going to him who sent me,” the Lord Jesus says in our gospel today.  “It is to your advantage that I go away,” he continues, “for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you.  But if I go, I will send him to you.”  Here, on the eve of his passion, the Lord promises his followers that even though he is leaving them, he’s not leaving them alone.    Once he is no longer on the scene, he assures them, a presence he refers to as the Advocate, also the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, will come to them.   The promise for those who trust and follow Jesus is thatGod’s spirit wil come to abide with us.   We recognize that it’s in baptism, that time and place where God claims us as his own and calls us to be followers of Christ, twhere the promise God God’s Spirit coming to be with us is fulfilled

8:30 At our 11:00 service today, two young men will 11:00 Evan and Dalton, you’re about to stand up in our midst and publicly affirm their your baptism.  In doing so, they’ll/you’ll in essence be saying Yes to God’s Yes to them/you.  They’ll/You’ll be saying Yes, I believe and I want those promises God made to me in my baptism—promises of adoption as a child of God, of forgiveness, and of a place with God and God’s people now and forever.  They’ll/You’ll  also be saying yes to the promise of God’s Holy Spirit—that advocate, the Spirit of truth that Jesus spoke of.   That’s a pretty important step, when we publicly claim those promises for ourselves.  But I want to be clear with you:  it’s equally important for us to claim those promises every day for the rest of our lives.  

It’s important to remember and claim the promise that you are God’s child, that God is your heavenly Father, on a daily basis.  Because there are forces working in the world to confuse us…to make us forget who we are—and whose we are.  There are forces at work, within us and without, to alienate us from God, to burden us with guilt and shame—to cause us to lose sight of the fact that we are forgiven.  Because once we lose sight of God’s wonderful gift of forgiveness, it doesn’t take much for us to spin away from our place with God and God’s people, into an orbit around something or someone else—and it’s bound to be someone or something that’s nowhere near as wholesome for us as God and God’s people.  When we forget to claim God’s forgiveness, we can easily wind up feeling we’re on our own.

That feeling is what we call loneliness.  If you haven’t experienced it already, there will be times when you will experience it in some significant way.  The sense that we’re completely on our own as we face the challenges and hurts and struggles of life.  The sense that there’s no one who really understands the way we feel, that there’s no one we can depend on to help us through it all.  The sense that, even though we might be surrounded by a crowd of people, when it comes down to it, we’re completely and utterly alone in this world. 

That sense of loneliness can be a pretty compelling thing.   It can lead us to reach out, to grasp, for anything--anyone, that might relieve us of those horrible feelings.   It’s one of the things that leads people to become dependent on alcohol or drugs. Or to get involved with someone who’s abusive, or who takes advantage of them.   Some try to cope with their loneliness by throwing themselves into their work, or into an endless and exhausting number of activities and commitments.  Loneliness can lead to desperation.  At the heart of desperation is despair.  And despair is one place we humans can’t stay for long.  Either we find a way to a better state of being, or we wind up destroying ourselves and sometimes others, in an effort to escape the despair.

Here’s the conclusion I’ve come to:   loneliness…is unavoidable.    Sooner or later, to some extent or another, we’re going to find ourselves lonely.  Probably because we rely on other people to keep us from feeling lonely.  The problem with that is, just as we ourselves can be, other people can be unreliable.  Loneliness may be inevitable also because, well, it comes with a sense that no one really understands us and, when it gets down to us, no one really can truly understand us. 

No one, that is, except for the One who created us.  No one except for the One who alone is able to comprehend—in a way that we ourselves can’t even comprehend, how it is that we’re wired, and why we do what we do, and what it is that we deeply long for.  The only One who really understands us is the One who completely knows us—and yet who still completely loves and accepts us, as we are.  The extent of that love and acceptance he’s made known to us on the cross of Christ.  And through Christ, he’s also made it known that…we’re not alone. 

The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, sent by the Father, is with us.   Whether we can sense his presence or not, he’s here…here in the gathered community of Christian believers, and here, in our own hearts and minds.  Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate.  An advocate is someone who stands up on our behalf.  It’s someone we can count on to go to bat for us, to the extent of their ability.   We may be at our wits end, ready to give up completely…life can bring us to that point.  But if it does bring us to that point of giving up, the Spirit of God, the Advocate, promised by the Lord Jesus, is there.  He may be that small, still voice in the back of our mind that’s saying, “It’s going to be okay…just hang in there and give it some time.”   Or the Advocate may be what’s at work in some friend or acquaintance—especially in someone who’s part of the community of faith, who just shows up or calls or texts or emails and says that one little thing that gives us a strand of hope that maybe, just maybe, things aren’t going to turn out quite as bad as we think.   Or, the Spirit of God may be there advocating for us in that parent, or in that friend, or perhaps even in that stranger we encounter who gives us some direction, who points us toward the right choice, who steers us away from the wrong choice.  The Spirit of truth, Jesus said, “will guide you into all truth.”

The truth I and so many other believers have found ourselves being guided into over and over again, is the one truth that, in the end, really matters.  It’s the truth of God’s immense and boundless love, for us, and for the world.  It’s the truth that comes to us in the cross.  It’s the truth that we can depend on, no matter how desperate or isolated we may find ourselves.  In the cross, God has spoken the truth that we all needed to hear the most, “I am here, for you and with you, no matter what.”   Once we’ve been guided into that truth, as you have Evan and Dalton our two confirmands, we can claim it, day by day, for the rest of our lives.   And that’s just what I urge you—along with the rest of us, to do. Because, claiming that truth day by day, we can know that, even if we are lonely, we’re never alone. 

Text:  John 10:11-18; Psalm 23

DISCIPLE LIFE:  FOLLOWING THE GOOD SHEPHERD

A philosophy professor stood before his class and without a word, he picked up a large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2 inches in diameter. He then asked the students, “Is this jar full now?”  They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He asked the students again, “Is this jar full now?” Most agreed that it was. The students laughed as the professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that, if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.  The pebbles are other things that matter, like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there’s no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you’ll never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There’ll always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand." But then…a student came up, took the jar, and proceeded to pour in a can of beer. Of course the beer filled the remaining spaces within the jar making the jar truly full.   “So,” asked the professor, “what’s this supposed to represent?”  “Simple,” the student replied.  No matter how full your life is, there’s always room for BEER.”

College students can have a wisdom of their own; philosophers such as that professor though, like to help us examine life’s fundamental questions.  “What’s life about?” is one of them.  “Is this all there is?” is another.  In fact, these are questions we can find ourself asking at any age.  Part of what moves us to ask it may be a set of cultural expectations…unlike many people throughout history, we live in a time and place where we seem to expect to be “happy”…and part of happiness as our society tends to define it is being fulfilled in what we’re doing.   The problem is, through advertizing and through our entertainment industry, happiness and fulfillment are always being redefined.  We may think and feel that we’re perfectly happy and fulfilled, until we see that one car commercial that’s geared just for people like us…the one that thrills us with a vision of what life could be like, “If only I had one of those.”  Next thing we know, we’re dissatisfied with what we’re driving now, and that dissatisfaction sort of bleeds over into other aspects of our life…and we can wind up with a sense of unhappiness over the way things are, or a longing for the way things “ought to be.”  Or, we’re sailing through life just fine, and then we see that TV program or that movie that brings into focus for us that our life is missing some critical component--some kind of relationship or some type of activity or role that, without that thing in our life, we suddenly feel incomplete.  Of course, over time, we may mature enough to recognize the fact that we’re being manipulated.  And so we learn to ignore the unnatural hunger that’s produced by living in a society that can only thrive as long as it keeps making us crave “Something Else.”  

But behind those kinds of cravings for “more,” beneath those artificially-generated yearnings, if we’re prone to paying attention to what’s really going on deep inside of us, we can find a more fundamental yearning.  It’s the drive that each of us who were created by God have to come to terms with our purpose—to engage with the “why” of our createdness.  It’s as if e were made with an empty space inside, an empty space with a specific shape…and until we find the one thing that was made to fill that space, we’re going to feel compelled to search for it.  And I’ll give you a hint…it’s not beer!  Some have said the shape of that space is that of a dove, the symbol of God’s Holy Spirit…and that until we seek and find and welcome the Spirit of God into the core of our being, we’re always going to be looking for “Something Else.”   That’s certainly one way to talk about it.  Another way to talk about that spiritual space inside of us is with the imagery used by our Lord Jesus in today’s gospel.

“I am the Good Shepherd...,” he says.  “I know my own and my own know me…I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.  So there will be one flock and one shepherd.”  Our Lord describes himself here in John  chapter 10 using the primary image found in the 23^rd psalm—that of a caring shepherd who’s passionately committed to looking after his sheep.  And to teach us about what he’s up to, he expands on this image.  The Lord Jesus implies that his suffering and death was not only for the sake of those who currently understand themselves as God’s people, but that it was for others—others who he also wants to make “a part of his flock.”  I want to suggest that, if we’re experiencing a sense of longing, if we’re yearning for more in life, it could be that there’s only one thing that’s ever going to really satisfy that longing…and that’s when we see ourself as part of the one flock that’s led and cared for by One Shepherd:  the Good Shepherd—the one who laid down his life for his sheep, and who was given the power to take up his life again. 

How do you see yourself?   Or to put it another way, how do you define yourself?  Is it in terms of your occupation?  Your income level?  Your education…or your role in your family?   Perhaps you see yourself primarily as a woman or a man.   With the resurgence of nationalistic pride we’ve seen over the last decade or two, some like to think of themselves as Americans.  Or could it be that you see yourself as a good person—or, for some of us, as somebody who’s “not too bad.”  Do you think of yourself in terms of being a success or a failure?   Old or young?   Too big or too little?   There’s almost no end to the ways we can define ourself, is there? 

But what if…what if God has already defined us?  And what if, until we start to define ourself as God has defined us, we’re going to be empty—unfulfilled, constantly yearning for Something Else?   What if God has a place and a role for us, and in order for us to be anything like “happy,” we’ve got to discover and start to engage that role?  If that’s the case—and let’s assume for now that it is…if that’s the case, then how in the world do we start to discover what God’s place and role for us might be?  

One place to start could be our Lord’s words and teachings.  Words such as Good Shepherd, and sheep, and one flock.  Now, these are metaphors, obviously… metaphors for what our Lord spoke of elsewhere in other terms—in terms of being his disciples, or of following him.   As the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, so our Lord Jesus laid down his life for his followers.  As the Good Shepherd has other sheep who do not belong to this fold, who he must also bring, and who will listen to his voice, so the Lord Jesus would, through baptism, come to call and claim many others—others who would also become his followers. 

Throughout the Northern Texas/Northern Louisiana Synod of our church body, when we speak of following the Lord Jesus, we’ve come to use the term “DiscipleLife.”  As you can see from these banners that we brought home from last week’s synod assembly, we can understand DiscipleLife in three ways…we can understand it as being Called…called by God through our baptism, to follow Christ.  We can understand it in terms of being Formed…Formed as followers of Christ, through being part of this community of those who through baptism are called to follow Christ.  And we can understand it in terms of being Gifted…Gifted as individuals and as a community, so that we can do the things that go with following Christ.

There are all kinds of things and people that we can follow, aren’t there?  There are all kinds of voices that we can listen to…many who we can allow to lead us, right?   What the Lord Jesus has said is that we who are his sheep, who belong to him, will listen to his voice.   The implication is that, having seen in the cross the depths of his care and commitment to us, we’ll put our trust in him.  Comprehending his compassionate love for us, we’ll let him lead us to find our place in his flock.   And once we’re there, we’ll at some point hopefully come to see ourselves as part of his one flock—as part of one community of those who are led by him, in one direction. 

DiscipleLife is sort of a bumper sticker for that general direction where our Lord is leading us. Here at Rejoice, we have more specific ways of fleshing out that direction…we talk about it in terms of certain “Marks of DiscipleLife.”   We recite these every Sunday at the end of our worship service.  What we’re about with these marks of DiscipleLife is keeping in focus where our Lord is leading us…what kind of life he’s calling us and forming us and gifting us to live together.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at where it is Jesus our Good Shepherd is leading us—at what it’s like to be part of his one flock.   For now, let’s just leave it here:  the Lord Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd.   By willingly embracing suffering and death on the cross for us, he’s shown himself to be a leader worthy of trusting—and to have a voice that’s worth listening to.  By his victory over the grave, he’s shown himself to be more powerful than death itself.  And so, while all kinds of voices may call us in many different directions…while we may think we hunger for a lot of different things, what we really should ask ourself is whether our deepest yearnings can only be met by heeding his voice, and living as part of the flock that follows him?

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

They seem to show up all the time at our front door.  They have something they’re trying to offer me, but it’s not always clear right away exactly what it is. They’ll ring the doorbell and, when I answer it, they’ll strike up a conversation, often as if they’re interested in being my best buddy.  Last week it was a fellow who informed me that some of my neighbors told him that they’d been seeing fire ants and some spiders—and he was wondering if I’d seen anything like that in my yard?  It was obvious what he was trying to sell me.  A few weeks ago it, was a young woman who was very friendly and wanted to know all about me and my family.  She turned out to be hawking magazine subscriptions.  Whenever someone like this shows up at my door—or whenever they call me on the phone for that matter, I usually just find myself  thinking, “Okay, let’s just cut to the chase…what’s this about?”   It’s not just that they’re complete strangers.  It’s not even that they sometimes seem a little bit scary—although if that’s the case, it can be kind of unsettling.  It’s that they turn up at my door or they call unexpectedly, at inopportune times, and I have a limited number of things I’m able to devote my time and energy to.  So, when these folks turn up, all I really want to know is, “What are they up to, and is it something I really need?”

According to Luke’s gospel, on that very first Easter Sunday, after he appeared to Peter and then to another couple of disciples as they were walking along the road, the risen Lord Jesus appeared—unexpectedly, to his gathered followers.  His appearance was so sudden and unsettling that they were actually frightened by him.  So he had to take a moment to assure them that it really was him, and not some ghost they were seeing.  And no sooner had he convinced them of this, when he cut right to the chase.   It’s like he was telling them, “C’mon, you guys, I don’t know why you’re all so surprised by my dying and rising again.  I told you this was going to happen.  It was all supposed to happen… And now I’m here to tell you why it’s all happened.”  That’s when he gave them the bottom line.  The reason for his arrest, for his innocent suffering and death, the purpose for all this, and for his rising from the grave, he told them, is so that “repentance and forgiveness” could be proclaimed in his name, to everyone.

Repentance…it’s kind of a churchy word, isn’t it?   I mean, it’s not a word you usually hear very much anywhere but in a church.  It’s not like you run into somebody you know at WalMart and you go, “Say, How’s that repentance of yours coming?”  It’s just not an everyday word people use.  And, while for those original disciples to whom Jesus appeared, the meaning of this word might have been pretty clear, over the past two thousand years or so, different Christian traditions have used the term differently. So, to us, “repentance” can be a somewhat confusing word.    When you say “repentance,” are you talking about saying five “Hail Marys” and one “Our Father” to show how sorry you are for your sins, like Roman Catholics do after confessing their sins to a priest?  Or do you mean whipping yourself on the back to punish yourself for your sins, like some medieval monks did?  Or do you mean not smoking, drinking, dancing or cussing, like our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters might mean when they use the word repentacne?   As I read this word in its biblical context, here’s how I’ve come to think of it:  think “new life.”  Think a change of direction.  Think getting re-oriented, so that your way of being in the world is constantly being transformed. 

Think of repentance in these terms, and then think of how this kind of repentance is one-half of the reason Jesus endured the cross and the grave.   At least, that’s the case as I read it, according to what the Lord said to his disciples after he rose from the grave.  It was all for the sake of forgiveness of sins, he told them… and it was for the sake of repentance.   Now, if we were raised Lutheran, we should know all about the forgiveness of sins.   Way back in the 16^th century, a priest and scholar named Martin Luther took a bold stand about the forgiveness of sins, in an attempt to reform the Christian church that was centered in Rome.  At that time, many church officials were abusing their power to forgive sins on God’s behalf.  Luther said that Christ entrusted the church with offering forgiveness to those who need it, and he argued that that the church should be generous in forgiving people—just as God is generous.  Instead of charging people money to give them assurance of forgiveness, as was widely being practiced in the medieval church, Luther said, the church should freely preach the good news of God’s grace, as it’s been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Because of this stand on forgiveness, Luther was branded a heretic.  Those who shared his stand were labeled by their enemies in Rome as “Lutherans.”  So we Lutherans today have a heritage and a tradition that’s rooted in the forgiveness of sins.  We continue to boldly proclaim and lift up that promise of forgiveness as the central claim of Christianity…and we do this even as many other popular churches seem to be focusing more on do’s and don’ts and on how to be morally righteous.   For us Lutherans, there’s only one way to be righteous:  and that’s by trusting the free gift of God’s righteousness that comes to us through Christ…by trusting the forgiveness that God offers all people in Christ’s name. 

Forgiveness of sins.  Yes, we Lutherans talk a lot about that….  But what about the other half of why the Lord Jesus said he suffered and died?  What about repentance?  It might well make one wonder….aren’t we ignoring something that, according to the Bible, is key to what the Lord Jesus said he’s all about?  The answer to that is a very Lutheran answer.  The answer is yes, we are ignoring it…and no, we aren’t.   One thing I love about Martin Luther is that he could live in the tension of two things that sound completely opposite, and yet are both equally true.  We Lutherans do tend to downplay, if not flat out ignore, the whole thing about repentance.   We constantly proclaim and teach that we’re saved by God’s grace alone, that all we can do is trust in God’s saving work for us in Christ.  And to proclaim and teach this effectively, most of us Lutheran pastors avoid focusing on “do’s and don’ts” and “oughts and ought-nots.”   We don’t want to give any credence to the idea that we have to, or that we can, do anything to be right with God.  Because that’s the notion that led to the great abuses in the 16^th century church, and it still leads to abuses in many churches today.  So, we don’t waqnt to talk a lot about what we must do or should do.  We want to lift up the critical importance of having faith in what Christ did when he demonstrated God’s unconditional love for us on the cross; we want to stress how that work of Christ was sufficient for all of us. 

But at the same time, we do talk about remembering our baptism, and about walking daily in our baptism.  Around here at Rejoice, we talk a lot about discipleship, or being followers of Jesus, and about what’s involved with that.  Basically, when we speak of recalling our baptism, we’re talking about recalling God’s promises, promises made personal to us in our baptism—promises of forgiveness of sin, of adoption as God’s children, and of having a place with God and with God’s people, now and forever.  But we also recall that with baptism comes God’s call…the call to live as part of the community of Christ, the community where we learn how to follow Christ.  And I guess, as I think of it, that’s where we Lutherans do stress this thing called repentance.  We don’t use that word, but it’s what we mean.  Repentance, if you’ll remember, as I defined it earlier, is new life; it’s a change of direction; it’s re-orienting our way of being in the world.  And to me…and to many who call themselves Lutheran Christians, there really is no re-orientation, no change of direction, no new life, that comes close to what happens when we “live wet”--when we walk daily under the grace of God that came to us personally first in the waters of baptism.

Let’s look for a minute at an example—the example of a Lutheran kid by the name of Gus.  Now, Gus may or may not resemble our puppet-friend Bob’s buddy, who goes by the name of Gus.  In any case, let’s say that Gus was baptized here at Rejoice as a baby, when his parents decided that was the thing to do.  And at Gus’s baptism, his parents very publicly made certain commitments.  They promised first of all to faithfully bring Gus to worship.  They promised to impart the most basic of Christian teachings to him, to make sure he’s familiar with the Bible, and to provide for his further instruction in the Christian faith.  At Gus’s baptism, God also made promises—those promises I mentioned before: forgiveness, adoption, and a place among God’s people now and forever.  With the sign of the cross made on his forehead, at baptism, God also marked Gus as one called to follow Jesus.  As Gus got older, his parents followed through on their commitments, and through things like worship and Sunday school and family devotions, Gus became aware of the promises God made to him in his baptism; on some level he gradually learned to put his trust in those promises.   Over time, as life does what life typically does and yanks the rug out from under him, Gus will learn from experience how important those baptismal promises of God really are.  Through weekly exposure to the Word and Sacraments of Christ in worship, he’ll experience, over and over again, the gift of God’s forgiveness.  This too will nurture and strengthen Gus’s faith—it’ll grow his trust in God.  And the more Gus trusts in God, the more he’ll discover what a wonderful, gracious, forgiving God we have.  And out of gratitude, Gus may eventually find himself wanting to align his life with what God wants him to do and to be in the world.  Hanging out here at Rejoice, he’ll hear and learn, over and over again, about that baptismal call to follow Jesus.  And by observing older youth and adults among us, he’ll learn how to live out that call.   He’ll learn how to serve others, as Christ served those in need.  He’ll learn how to love and forgive, as Christ loved and forgave; he’ll learn how to use his gifts as part of this living organism we call the body of Christ.  He’ll learn all kinds of things by being part of this faith community. And as a result, essentially, he’ll come to experience new life; he’ll experience a change of direction from where his life would otherwise have been headed.  He’ll be constantly getting re-oriented to what it means to be one of God’s people in the world.  

Repentance and forgiveness,..forgiveness and repentance. The two really go together.  In fact, they’re really two sides of the same coin. Both of them are things we really need; and both are a result of the fulfillment of God’s plan in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We don’t have to do anything to earn God’s forgiveness, right? Forgiveness simply happens, apart from anything we do.  Through the crucified and risen Christ, God has shown us that, once and for all.  And I want to suggest that we don’t have to do anything to bring about repentance, either. Repentance simply happens.  Here in the community of the crucified and risen Christ, God leads us to new life, to a change of direction, to re-orientation.  By forgiving our sins and placing us in the community of the baptized, God leads us to true repentance.

Text:  John 12: 20-33

BAPTISM AND VOCATION:
CALLED TO CARE FOR CREATION

      “It’s not easy being green.”   If you’re old enough, you’ll recognize that as the title line to a song sung by an adorable little muppet named ‘Kermit the Frog’.  Kermit’s song, you may recall, was a sort of lament about being different.   Today though, the words “being green” can carry another meaning.   “Being green” is a label we give to those who care enough about the environment to change the way they live.  I don’t know if you noticed, but all along some the walls of the hallway here at Smith Elementary [last week], they [had] displayed these posters made by some of the students—posters where the kids spell out some specific way that they are ‘green’.   “I am green because I recycle”….”I am green because I keep my thermostat set to save energy”…I am green because I ride my bike to school instead of having my parents drive me”….  There seems to be a popular movement afoot, a rapidly growing groundswell of support, for this idea of doing things to “save the environment.”   All over the globe, we humans seem to be developing a new understanding of the relationship between how we live and the resources we all need to keep on living.   And the more we learn, the clearer it becomes that, to be truly “green,” to really change our lives in the way we need to if we’re going to “save the environment,” is a pretty big challenge.  We’re starting to see that, to make the kinds of changes we’ll have to make to leave behind a life-sustaining world, , it’s going to demand a lot, from all of us.   In our context today, “It’s not easy being green” has a whole new meaning.  

      We’re in the midst of a series on Vocation, on how through our baptism, God not only claims us to be his children—but how he calls us to live as his children, by doing certain things in the world.  There are any number of things God may call us to do.  At the heart of everything and anything God might be calling us to do, though, is the call to deny ourself, and to follow the Lord Jesus in cross-bearing service to our neighbors.  We’ve reflected on how, to deny ourself is simply to turn away from attempting to earn God’s favor through what we do…and to trust in God’s free gift of salvation in Christ.  Once we do that, then, instead of getting caught up in striving to be good enough for God, we can simply focus on finding Christ-like ways to serve our neighbors—for the sake of our neighbors, and not to earn points with God for ourselves.  Once we abandon any hope of self-righteousness to embrace God’s promise of righteousness in Christ, then we can listen for the ways that God may be calling us to bear the cross of service to those in need.  Today we’re going to look at how God might be calling us to the not-easy task of “being green”—to care for our neighbors by caring for God’s creation.

      “We’re all just a few inches of topsoil away from starving.”  Pastor Jim Hanson, a retired pastor who served rural parishes for many decades, loved to remind everyone he knew about this simple fact—and he liked to remind folks often.  Living in agricultural communities, Pastor Hanson had witnessed the transformation of farming from small, family-operated farms and ranches to huge agribusiness operations.   He saw firsthand how the practices of corporate-owned farming degrade the land—how they typically use techniques that lead to water and wind erosion and other depletion of the topsoil.  These big operations often have little or no regard for what they’ll leave behind for future generations; the bottom line is pretty much all that drives them.  Pastor Hanson knows that, we who live in the cities and who buy much of the food produced by these companies need to be reminded:  there’s a high and unseen cost for the cheap food we have available to us…and we’re not the only ones who could wind up paying this price.   In the midst of the current economic crisis, you can hear all kinds of voices raising the alarm that our kids and our grandkids are gonna have to pay for the big government bail- outs of the financial and other sectors of the economy.   But what if massive debt is the least of the problems we’re leaving behind for our kids and grandkids to face?  What if some of the essential resources we’ve all take for granted—things like good soil and plentiful water, are in scarce supply for the generations that follow us?   What if climate change caused by industrialization leaves them with a barely inhabitable planet? If that’s the case, I have an idea the national debt will be the least of their troubles! 

      This kind of stuff, our parents and grandparents didn’t have to think much about…mostly because it wasn’t until the last 40-50 years that industrialization reached a level that it had a big enough impact on things.  For most of recorded history, the bulk of people lived close to the land—and technology didn’t enable them to abuse or exploit natural resources like we do today.  Many people had a much deeper appreciation of how the natural order worked, and of their dependence on it.   The Lord Jesus, as we can see in our gospel today, taught using parables and illustrations that drew on the natural world and on agriculture. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  Using this agricultural example, the Lord spoke about the value and meaning of his suffering and death, in a way most ancient people could understand.   Pretty much everyone knew that a whole field of wheat can eventually come from planting a single grain…they understood that Jesus was implying that, as a result of his “falling into the earth and dying,”  many of his followers would arise among the nations of the world to carry on his work. Jesus’ teachings drew on many familiar images of the natural world--a mustard seed that, although it was the smallest of seeds, grew into the largest of bushes, so that all the birds of the air can find shelter in its branches…a farmer who went out to sow, and some seed fell among the thorns, and some seed fell onto rocky soil, and some seed fell onto good soil, where it took root, grew and produced a hundredfold.”  He spoke of being “the light of the world”… of being able to give “living water”… of one house built on sand and another built on rock, and what happened to each when the wind and rain beat on them.

      In our time, someone else raises our grain, usually in places far from where we live; we just go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, without thinking much of what all went into that loaf.  For us, bushes come from landscaping nurseries.  And to many of us, birds are often seen as noisy, messy pests.  We can just turn the faucet and make water flow, or throw a switch and make light shine.  Building contractors mix sand with concrete to pour foundations for houses that are like rock.   We don’t typically think much about the effect of the elements on our house.   Because of all this, we can have a hard time comprehending what many of Jesus’ teachings mean.  And we often have just as hard a time recognizing and valuing the gifts of God’s creation. 

      I want to suggest this morning that, living in the time and culture we do offers us many opportunities to pick up our cross and follow the Lord Jesus.  One simple way we can begin to do this is by finding ways to re-connect with God’s creation.   We can shut off the TV set and go for a hike in nature; we can take time to watch the sun rise or set from our backyard; we can plant and raise some vegetables in a garden plot or in a big pot.  We can go camping, or take a trip to the mountains.   Or, we can go fishing on a remote lake, and allow ourselves to feel a bit of awe and wonder at the precious gift of fresh, clean water.   We can visit a farm or a ranch and learn how it is that some of our food comes to us.   Those of us who have families can make sure that our young have these kinds of experiences—experiences they won’t have if they’re always sitting in front of a video game, or if they’re busy playing soccer or basketball all the time.  And we as a congregation can look for ways to support families in their efforts to cultivate a wholesome appreciation for God’s creation.  Some of our younger kids are off this weekend at our synod church camp; Briarwood Retreat Center is a great place to shut down the technology and tune in more to God’s gifts in creation.  Our confirmation students recently worked on a project making ‘creation care awareness’ posters—posters with pictures of living things and beautiful natural scenery, along with Bible verses that celebrate God as the creator.  One dream that some of us have talked about—a dream that could, with some effort and teamwork, become a reality here at Rejoice, is the dream of developing a community garden on our church property.   With a project like this, we could easily teach ourselves, our young people, and folks out in the community who want to participate, how to raise food in a way that has a low impact on the environment—using much less water, and avoiding the chemicals and artificial fertilizers used by those big agribusiness companies that grow much of our food.      

      Our kids and our grandkids, and those who hopefully follow them, are going to have an incredibly rough go of things, unless people like you and me start to do something to change the ways we think.  And unless we change the way we think, we won’ be able tor willing to get on board with the big changes we as a society need to make.  These things we’ve just been looking at are a good start in the right direction.  But they are only a start.  Many who’ve spent considerable time exploring the issue say that, if there’s going to be enough change to make a difference to future generations, then many people who care are going to have to engage the political system. 

      For our favorite theologian, Martin Luther, the State is one of what he called the “masks of God.” When the state works for the well-being of its people, Luther taught, then God is at work behind the state.  In a democratic system like ours, I take this to mean that, when our elected officials and representatives work to ensure security for the American people—those of today as well as those of tomorrow, then God is at work through them.  And I take it to mean that God is at work through us when we inform ourselves and write letters and make phone calls and even campaign for policies designed to preserve the gifts of God’s creation that we all need to live and thrive. 

      Do you hear God calling you to care for your neighbors by finding ways to care more for creation?  I hope so.  If the scientific consensus that’s emerging is even partly accurate, if we’re looking at anything like the kind of trouble many experts are saying is headed our way, I hope an awful lot of us can hear the Lord calling right now.  If you’ll listen carefully, I have an idea that this is what you may hear him saying:  “I fell into the earth and died so that many more like me would come forth to bear much fruit.  I care deeply about the world and all of its inhabitants…I bore the cross for all those who are on the planet now, and for all those who will be on the planet.  Will you?”

Text:  John 2:13-22

BAPTISM AND VOCATION:

Called to Serve as Citizens

Mahatma Gandhi.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nelson Mandela.  Certain names have become iconic; they represent our ability to address injustice by influencing the political sphere through peaceful, non-violent protest.  Sometimes sweeping change needs to happen in a society, but the injustice is so deeply entrenched politically that only drastic measures will bring the needed change.  In the 20^th century, Gandhi, King and Mandela arose to show us how to take drastic measures that effect change and yet at the same time are non-destructive. 

In our gospel today, Jesus forcefully addresses injustice when he encounters it in the public sphere.   In his time and culture, the religious realm and the civic realm—and the realm of commerce, were all jumbled together.  This could be clearly seen in the temple courtyard in Jerusalem.  Here at the temple, a system had developed to allow Jewish people to atone for their guilt through sin offerings of sacrificial animals.   There were standard offerings that people were to give to the temple priests for sacrifice; but because there was such a huge disparity of wealth among the people, there were allowances for the poor to purchase inexpensive sacrifices, such as doves, while those who could afford to do so were expected to purchase and offer more costly sheep and cattle.  It appears a whole business culture of vendors had grown up right inside the temple courtyard, to accommodate the various needs of different people.  To keep from polluting the transactions with Roman money that had the image of the emperor on it, there were money changers present who also did a thriving business there.  A ruling council of religious elders oversaw all of this, along with many other aspects of daily life among the Jewish people.   Apparently though, when Jesus arrived at the temple, he found this whole system to be not just lacking in integrity, but a travesty.  It seems that, with the assent of the authorities—and possibly even to the authorities’ financial gain, the vendors and moneychangers were taking advantage of and ripping off the poor.  Jesus’ response?   He assumed the prophetic role of confronting the injustice head-on.  He did this in the way he had available to single-handedly disrupt the system.  It might be a bit of a stretch to call what he did ‘non-violent civil disobedience’…not in the sense of King and Gandhi and Mandela, anyway, since Jesus used a whip, and he got pretty physical and intimidating.  But there’s no sign that Jesus hurt anyone with the whip, nor that he did anything more than wreak havoc on business as usual.  In any case, whether we call it violent or non-violent, what he did was certainly a bold act of civil disobedience, and undoubtedly it made a lasting impression on those who were present—as well as on all who heard about it.  His actions brought him face to face with the powers that be—powers that would soon have him arrested and condemned to die, for this and other “offenses.”   It definitely took a lot of guts for Jesus to do what he did—a sane person doesn’t do such things without a deep sense that they’re called by God to do what they’re doing. 

We’re into a series now, reflecting on some of the ways we are called by God through our baptism, called not just to be God’s children, but called also to do specific stuff in the world.  The idea that God calls us to do certain things is called ‘vocation’; we all have at least a few different vocation or callings.   The first vocation all baptized Christians are called to is to follow Jesus, in denial of the self, and in cross-bearing love for our neighbors.  Last week we looked at how those two things go together hand in hand—how, in order to be truly free to take up our cross, we must first deny that our self has the ability to do anything that will save us or make us right with God.  Only when we turn our back on self-righteous, self-serving good works can we trust in God’s free gift of salvation in Christ. And only then will we be free to do things that are truly good--things that are done purely to serve our neighbors, and not to earn us points with God.  Once we deny ourself and trust in Christ, then, if we listen, there are any number of ways we might hear God calling us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus in service to our neighbors.  Today we’re going to reflect on one of those ways God may call us to take up our cross: as citizens.

In our time and culture, to a significant extent, we who are of voting age are the “powers that be.”  We can all have a role in helping to oversee things that take place in the public sphere…things that have to do with our civic life, things that have to do with commerce, and even things that have an impact on the religious life of many people.  We can have a role—if we choose to.  Now, obviously, not everyone chooses to do this.  For some, the only time they chose to do so is once or twice a year when there’s an election.   And while the voting booth is one place where we can help exercise oversight of what’s going on all around us, it’s far from the only place. 

My dad was politically active throughout my childhood.  He cared so much that he was actually an elected official of his political party.  He was the precinct committeeman for our neighborhood.  That meant he was very hands on with campaigning, going door to door at election time to talk to people and turn out the vote.  Beyond voting, being an active partisan is one way any of us might be called to serve as citizens; my dad was a great example of a deeply faithful and committed worker for his party.  But that’s not what I remember my dad for most.  What I remember him for the most was the time he stood up to those in his own party who he believed were working against the interests of the community.  Many years ago, there was a plan to economically redevelop a significant part of the neighborhoods that surrounded the downtown area of Barrington, Illinois.   The plan was called the “Golden Triangle.”    A lot of money was to be poured into this redevelopment project, a project that would benefit many businesses, and that, in the long run, would probably increase the city’s tax base.  But Dad saw past the plan, to what it would mean for many ordinary people who lived in town.  And so, in city meetings he spoke out publicly against the plan--to the surprise of many others in his party.  The local newspaper published a big article that quoted some who said they just couldn’t believe that anyone would oppose such an obviously beneficial project.  But the article also quoted my dad, who said that he felt preserving the quality of life for those living in town was more important than anything the project might provide.  I’ve never been more proud of my dad than I was when I read that article.  His stand was unpopular with those he’d worked with politically for years; so unpopular that I’m certain many from that point on wrote my dad off as a dependable political ally.  He wasn’t as active in local politics after that, and I suspect it was mainly because his stand on the Golden Triangle cost him.

I think we all know—in spite of what some would have us believe, that God isn’t a Republican.  I think we all know God isn’t a Democrat either.   God isn’t about party politics; in Christ we can see that God is for all of us, regardless of our political affiliation.  God can’t be reduced to our political agendas; nor can God be forced to take sides in our philosophical battles and so-called “culture wars.” For almost every ‘yes’ you can find in the Bible on a moral or ethical issue, there’s a ‘no’.  God, it seems, isn’t as black and white about most matters as we humans can sometimes be.  If you doubt that, read the gospels and see how often the Lord Jesus is at odds with those who are black and white in their approach to things.  So then, the natural question to ask might be, “If God doesn’t play by our political rules, how can we tell when we’re called by God to serve in the political sphere?”  To me, one answer to that is with the cross.  The Lord Jesus was called, at least in this one instance, to serve in the political sphere, and his doing so was a big part of what led him to the cross.   The Lord Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him.  So it seems to me one way to tell if we’re called to serve in a specific way that involves politics is to ask, “What might this cost me?  How am I picking up a cross here, for the sake of my neighbors’ needs?   What am I being called to sacrifice here, for the benefit of someone other than myself?”    If what we’re considering demands that others suffer instead of us, if we and people like us are the main ones who benefit, and it’s not costing us much, perhaps what we’re considering is not a call from God.

Not all of us are called to be involved politically as my Dad was. And so not all of us are going to have opportunities to take a stand for others that leads to suffering the kind of loss as it seems to me my dad did.  But perhaps some of us are called to sacrifice something for others’ sake.   Maybe we’re called to give a certain amount of our free time to staying informed…staying informed, for instance, about issues that can have a real impact on people who are powerless to act on their own behalf.  One thing we can consistently find throughout the Scriptures is that God stands with and for the poor and the oppressed.  God heard the cries of the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt, and God raised up Moses to stand up on their behalf, and to be his instrument in delivering them from their slavery.  God established laws for his people to protect the poor and to free people from oppression.   Every 50th year, for instance, was to be a ‘year of Jubilee’; those families who had lost land throughout the previous generation were to have their land restored again, so that poverty and powerlessness didn’t carry from one generation to another.   Immigrants and other foreigners in the land were to be treated with mercy and respect.  The Lord Jesus didn’t just confront injustice in the temple; he taught, repeatedly and pointedly, about the need of his followers to care for and serve the poor.  He even went so far as to identify himself with the poor, “Whatever you did or did not do for the least of these,” he said, “you did or did not do it for me.”   It seems to me, then, that one way God may be calling us Christians who enjoy the power of democracy to serve, is by advocating for the poor and powerless.  

All of us of legal age can do that by not just voting our own pocketbooks, but rather voting for those whose policies will respond to the most vulnerable and helpless in society.  Some of us may be called to do more than vote; God may be calling some of us to write letters to our representatives, or to join in on blogs, in order to speak out for the hungry, or to stand up for those without healthcare or decent housing, for those who can’t find employment, for those who suffer from discrimination.  Some of us might be called to be the prophetic voice of Christ in the world today…confronting those who would close their eyes to injustice or turn their back on human suffering.   

Taking such action isn’t likely to win us anything.  Taking such action is much more likely to cost us something; at very least, it may cost us some time and energy we might want to use for more self-serving pursuits.   It could even mean getting ourself into hot water, with those who disagree with us, with those whose interests are aligned with whatever it is our efforts may be undermining.   But that’s the nature of being Christians; we are people who live full