theolog cabin

Hiatus

2007-05-01T03:39:00.000-04:00

As you can see, the Cabin has been neglected as of late. It's dusty and full of cobwebs and no sermons have come to live here for a while. It languished through fall and winter and into spring.

But now the weather is nice again, and soon it will be time to visit the Cabin again. I'm just pondering how we should get there, and how the place should be cleaned and organized.

The old after-Pentecost sermons need to be recategorized by Proper rather than as the Umpteenth Sunday after Pentecost. The rest of my internship sermons need to be excavated and re-named by liturgical day and Scripture. And in a way I am pondering whether I should continue to post sermons, and how I feel about the possibility of plagiarism.

Let's hope that with the slowdown of summer comes some time for me to attend to these things. For now, I encourage patience. Thanks.

December 24, 2004 (Christmas Eve A)

2006-08-08T16:46:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
Hebrews 1:1-3
Isaiah 9:2; 6-7
Luke 2:1-20 (primary text)

My supervisor and I decided we would do a sort of tag-team sermon for Christmas Eve, to give people (especially those not used to coming to church) some variety in the voices and thoughts they were hearing. We ended up doing short vignettes on the different players in the Christmas story. I've included the bits he wrote along with the bits I wrote.

Click on the time link to read the sermon.

Townsfolk by semfem's supervisor
At the manger we find Joseph and Mary, the shepherds, and the wise men. Where are the residents of Bethlehem? Maybe they sleep after a hard day’s work. Bethlehem—-King David’s city—-has had a busy day and bursts at the seams with visitors, even making a shekel or two.

Bethlehem has many masters. One is the Roman Emperor; another is the local king, Herod. With all Israel, the little town looks forward to the day when it can crown its own king, follow its own messiah, and worship its own God. Bethlehem has prayed hard and worked hard—don’t they deserve their own dazzling God?

This dazzling God would probably give people just what they wanted. A prophet of long ago had promised them a child who would be many things: wonderful counselor, mighty king, everlasting father, prince of peace. That’s what they wanted!

We (I mean they) wouldn’t have to see the dark side—the poor in the hills around Bethlehem, the homeless in its streets, the shunned in its stables. In fact we (I mean they) barely see the dark side now. Bethlehem gets on with life, on this busy day and all others, people taking care of themselves.

Bethlehem’s hopes have been modest—-good business, good order-—and daring: When will this mighty king be born? Its fears have been small, too—-crowds, rabble-—with bigger fears lurking: “Will we make it? Will we be joining the ranks of the poor, the homeless, the shunned?” “The hopes and fears of all the years” meet here tonight.

Joseph by semfem
There is a man, a new father, there beside the manger, making the best of the situation. The baby is not his, but he has promised to raise this baby as a good Jewish firstborn son. He has agreed to marry the child's mother as originally promised, and gather them into a family.

It all started about six months ago, with his fiancée’s story about the Holy Spirit that was just unbelievable. He tried to listen, but he wasn't born yesterday. He knew where babies came from. He knew that all the evidence painted a picture of his fiancée’s indiscretion. How could anyone think otherwise? Everyone would think he was a complete fool.

And then, the dream that changed everything, that said, no, Joseph, this woman will be your wife and this baby will become your son. He will need your care and protection to grow into a man worthy of his name--Jesus, “God who saves us.” Forget what the world tells you and believe her.

When they arrived in Bethlehem, his long-lost cousins made their opinion clear about this pregnancy. They followed up with a quick slam of the door. No shelter, no warmth, no safety for the very pregnant woman at his side. Could he find a place for her to rest? Could he find some dinner? Could he make a life for this new family?

How can I raise the Messiah? he thought. I'm just a simple man. I don't know what I'm doing.

Shepherds by semfem's supervisor
What about the shepherds? Watching and listening, fighting off sleep, cold under the stars. King David was a shepherd, a king, a poet. But tonight around Bethlehem the shepherds have no royalty, no poetry. So, what do they bring to the manger? Precious little, that’s what.

Precious-—believe it or not they have a priceless gift. They already know they are poor. This is a wisdom that will elude many tonight: Caesar, Herod, the townsfolk of Bethlehem. Little-—in fact, the shepherds have even less than little. They have nothing. The shepherds know they are very small and weak beneath the winter sky.

A prophet of long ago had spoken of filling in valleys and bringing mountains low. Was this prophecy about more than geography? Would God raise not just the valleys, but also people living in poverty—-people like the shepherds? Would God humble not just the mountains, but also the mighty? Would God change the world?

The shepherds will witness what the townsfolk will miss--the event not just of a lifetime, but of an eternity. God will find, this night, a home in an impoverished barn with nothing to offer. God will find, this night, a home in impoverished hearts with nothing to offer. What we wouldn’t pay for a shepherd’s heart, an impoverished heart!

Mary by semfem
There is a woman beside the manger. No, scratch that. There is a half-grown girl by the manger, who is relieved but a little shocked that she has managed to give birth to her first child, without her mother or a midwife.

She finally tears her eyes away from the baby to look at the man beside her. His face is patient but his eyes are far away. She wants to ask him what he’s thinking, but the silence is too thick to break. Why did he stay with her after finding out she was pregnant?

Nine months...it seems so long ago. Was she dreaming when the angel came to her and told her not to be afraid? Did that angel actually tell her that this baby would be born not only of her flesh, but of the Holy Spirit? What was she thinking when she agreed?

Anything seemed possible now. She had a beautiful new son who would play an important part in God’s plan for the world. She had a faithful husband who had trusted her and was going to marry her-—most men would have left months ago. They didn’t have much, but they had God’s promise.

Mary could feel her heart overflow with hopes and dreams as the rest of the world came to a stop. Great things for you, little one, she whispered. Great things for you.

Magi by semfem's supervisor
Enter the magi—mysterious figures from the East, who spend their time seeking signs, unlocking the past, predicting the future. Today’s scientists would hardly recognize them as forerunners—-maybe we are always a bit embarrassed by our ancestors.

In their watching, waiting, and wondering, the magi represent what most of the ancient world has for science. And now they have detected a very big sign-—something moving in the sky. What does it mean? This night the thing they call a “star” is still over the horizon. So are the magi. But they are on the way.

We know that near the end of the journey, the magi will stop to ask directions from King Herod. True to form, Herod will seek to use them and their science to his own advantage. Herod-—in his own way-—knows where this “star” leads.

What do the magi bring besides curiosity? Packed on the camels are gifts-—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The magi set an example for later generations, not only as scientists but also as bearers of Christmas gifts.

But this journey will teach them that, no matter how much we want to be givers, Christmas makes receivers of us all. Christmas teaches the magi of their impoverishment. And us, too.

Jesus by semfem
As for us...as we approach the manger...what do we see?

We see a tiny baby who cannot even hold up his own head. His words are cries and coos, and his act of love takes place in the warmth and softness of his mother’s arms.

This is the beginning of a life...a human life. The first chapter of a human life. And we all know how human lives end.

When we see this baby, what do we see? Do our hopes and fears fall on these tiny shoulders, into these tiny hands? Will this tiny mouth teach us the meaning of life? Will this baby be the beginning of something new? Will we see the wonder of a God who becomes small to embrace the world?

What are we looking for as we approach the manger? One more Christmas ornament? Or are we seeking God? Here we behold God-—emptied for our sake.

Let us rejoice in the gift lying in the manger. Rejoice that our dazzle has been transformed into joy, our anxiety into peace. See in the manger the God who is always with us, the God who dies and is reborn in our impoverished hearts each day. Amen.

December 19, 2004 (Advent 4A)

2006-08-07T03:19:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
Isaiah 7:10-16
Luke 1:46-55 (read responsively)
Matthew 1:18-25 (primary text)

I was getting pretty tired by this point on internship. Click on the time link to read the sermon.

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Well. It's almost here. Can you feel it? This is the fourth week of preparation before The. Big. Day. We've been preparing for peace, preparing for the Spirit, preparing for change, and now we are preparing for a sign. Preparing for a sign. It's not always something that is easy to do. In fact, the very nature of signs seems to be that we are usually not prepared for them, or for what they really mean.

Have you ever asked God for a sign? Maybe a sign to help you make a difficult decision. Maybe you were confused, or angry, or scared, or frustrated. Maybe God felt very far away and you needed to know that someone was listening. Maybe your world was falling apart and you needed to know that God was there to help you put it back together. Or maybe you were in a time of doubt, and you wanted a sign to show that God really did exist.

We seem to usually ask God to come in and change something, or come in and fix something. We might ask God for a miracle. We might ask God to come and bring us world peace or eliminate hunger or something else huge like that. Or, we expect God to come in and defy the laws of nature, tearing the heavens open and coming down in a cloud of power like something out of Revelation.

God knows that we humans long for big, obvious signs, for miracles, for visions, for appearances, and for magic. This is exactly why in the Isaiah reading today, God offers King Ahaz his choice of a sign, from the depth of the grave to the height of the heavens. Anything he wants! God has a message for Ahaz, and Ahaz gets to choose how to receive it. So...why does Ahaz pass this chance up? If you had the chance to receive direct communication from God, don't you think you'd take it?

Ahaz claims that he will not ask for a sign because, as it says in Deuteronomy, he is not supposed to put God to the test. But maybe the real reason he refuses to choose a sign is that he knows no matter what sign he chooses, it won't carry the message he wants to hear. Ahaz is trying to decide whether or not to become allies with Assryia to defend against other intruders. He seems to know that God doesn't want him to make the alliance, so he tries to ignore the message he doesn't want to hear.

Doesn't this happen to us too when we ask God for a sign? If we ask a question that starts, "God, if you exist, come down and prove it," we've already made up our minds about the answer. We might ask God to miraculously heal our friend, but if our friend IS healed, the next question might be, how can God heal only some people and not others? How could God be that unfair? It seems like when we ask God a question, we usually have a preferred answer in mind. We might ask God for something, but seldom do we enjoy giving up control over that thing.

Signs are definitely tricky to prepare for, because they seem to give mixed signals. Signs have two very different sides to them. They show us that God is concerned and involved in our world, but they can also carry difficult messages that we want to avoid. We long for a sign from God--we long to know that we aren't alone. But at the same time, we don't want to hear the message of that sign when it conflicts with our own interests. Sometimes, like Ahaz, we are tempted to avoid God's signs.

So what does God do with Ahaz? He says, Too bad, man, I'm giving you a sign whether you like it or not. And since you won't choose a sign to ask for, I'll have to choose for you. Here's your sign: a young woman is pregnant and will name her child Immanuel. I know, it doesn't sound like much of a sign. Young women are pregnant and give birth every day. But that's the kind of God I am. I work within the beings I have created. My will is shown in creation, not apart from it.

Fast-forward to Joseph's time. Joseph can see that Mary is pregnant, and he knows that this is a sign. But at first he sees it only as a sign of disgrace. He seems to be a decent guy who tries to do the right thing, but there's just no good way to handle Mary's apparent indiscretion. Not until God's angel visits Joseph through a dream and reinterprets the sign for him through Isaiah's words, does the sign become a sign of wonder and blessing.

Even then, the sign of Mary giving birth to Jesus probably still gave Joseph mixed feelings. Maybe he was upset and confused there in Bethlehem, wondering if he did the right thing in marrying Mary and adopting a son that wasn't his. Maybe he felt left out of this major event. Maybe he was frustrated that he couldn't find the right words to say--since nowhere in the Bible do we have a record of him speaking. But he was willing to trust God and adopt this new child and care for it as his own.

One more sign was literally on the horizon for Mary and Joseph and Jesus, and that is the Holy Star. This is a sign we normally see as a blessing; it shone above the stable to lead the three magi to the newborn Jesus. It signified the cosmic importance of this small child. Yet this star was most likely a comet, and comets were a sign of unluckiness in the ancient world. This sign also has two sides; it acts as a cosmic beacon of God's birth in the world, but for those unlucky baby boys born at the same time as Jesus, the star foretold a time of persecution and death. King Herod clung to his ambition and fear in the face of this sign and lashed out at innocent people. Once again, signs have an ambiguous nature. We long for them--the wise men rejoice at them--but they can have dark results as well.

Joseph's willingness to trust that the sign given to him would be one of blessing, not disgrace, is instrumental in Matthew's gospel. In this text, Joseph is receiving an annunciation of his own, mirroring the one Mary receives in the gospel of Luke. They both seem to have encounters where a sign that appears to be a mistake is reinterpreted as a sign of God's love and God's action in the world. Mary is told that she will bear God's son; Joseph is told that God's son has been entrusted to his fatherly care.

Joseph's annunciation is more mystical and dreamlike than Mary's, because Matthew paints us a picture of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all history. This newborn child is the prism of the ages through which all things are seen. Time and space come to a standstill as the heavens slowly grind into place and the fateful Star takes its position over the stable, where the fulfillment of the universe is being born as a small and helpless baby. Everything is leading up to this moment, and everything afterwards will proceed from this moment. This is truly a sign that is BOTH as deep as the grave and as high as the heavens. Long ago, Ahaz had refused to choose a sign, so God chose one that encompassed all others. The life of God with us--Immanuel--would reach both the grave and the heavens, and everywhere in between.

What does the coming of Christ really mean for us? To borrow a word from last week, it means CHANGE. It seeps into every corner of our lives. It permeates every part of us and makes its home in our hearts. It is a sign with many consequences, a sign that leads to peace, to the Spirit, and to a fundamental change in the way we relate to God. It constantly challenges us to examine signs of disgrace for signs of blessing, and challenges our concept of what we think blessings actually are.

And so we are to prepare for a sign--we are to prepare for an event that will turn the world upside down. We are to prepare for the Spirit's transformation of the world into the reign of God, the time of peace and shalom. And we are to prepare for an infant who is God with us, with us indeed to the end of the age. Let us prepare with watchful eyes and hopeful hearts. Amen.

December 15, 2004 (Advent 3 Midweek)

2006-08-07T03:08:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
Luke 1:46-55 (The Book of God by Walt Wangerin)

Some remembrances form a meditation for our midweek Advent services, which each focused on a different translation of the Magnificat--Mary's song. Click on the time link for Walt's words, and to read what I had to say.

Luke 1:46-55, as told in The Book of God by Walt Wangerin

Mary whispered, "Things are changing! I think God is turning the whole world upside down. What do you think? God is lifting up the little people, a lowly maid like me, he is blessing me! Next he will knock the mighty from their thrones! And hungry people will eat, and rich people will go hungry! Things are changing! I know it. The world will not be the same tomorrow. Does anyone else know this, too? God is rising up, just as he did for Israel in Egypt. God is remembering his people! He is remembering the promises which he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to Abraham's children forever. My soul magnifies the Lord! I can't help it anymore. My spirit is rejoicing in God my Savior!

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Maybe you heard about this, but there was a huge celebration last Sunday, down at the Catholic church named for Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was a celebration of the day the Virgin Mary appeared just outside of Mexico City to a poor native peasant named Juan Diego, almost 475 years ago. Now, if you were here a few weeks ago, you might remember Pastor Larry telling us the story of Juan Diego and his vision of Mary. It's the story where Mary appeared to this peasant and told him to carry a message from her to the bishop of Mexico, that he should build a temple to her on that very spot. When the bishop did not believe Juan Diego, he was given a sign by Mary: roses, blooming on a rocky hillside in the middle of December. Juan Diego carried an armful of the roses in his cloak to the bishop, emptied the cloak out, and mysteriously Mary's image appeared on the cloak's fabric. This image is actually a photograph of the cloak as it appears today.

Now, the bishop didn't just say, "Okay, I believe you, Juan Diego, let's get started building this temple." He actually dropped to his knees weeping, and prayed and begged forgiveness of Mary for not listening to her messenger sooner. For Mexicans then and now, this is not just a minor historical epilogue. You see, only ten years before Mary's appearance to Juan Diego, Mexico had been conquered by the Spanish in a very violent conflict. In Juan Diego's vision, Mary was not pale-skinned like the conquerors, but dark-skinned like Juan Diego and the people who had been conquered. She spoke not in Latin or Spanish, but in the native language Nahuatl. The bishop's plea for forgiveness was also the conqueror bowing down before the conquered, the European admitting defeat before the Nahuatl. A Mary who inspired awe and respect from the conquerers was immensely important to a conquered people. As far as they were concerned, this was turning the world upside down. Mary's song was coming true! The mighty were being knocked from their thrones, and the lowly were being lifted up!

Today Mary's temple still stands in Mexico City. It is known as the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. People come from thousands of miles away to pay their respects to Mary, the Mother of God, who was also one of them, their own mother, and one of the "little people" as Walt Wangerin calls them. Our Lady of Guadalupe is everywhere in Mexico--towns and businesses have shrines to her and every cathedral has a chapel or an area devoted to her. One market even has a large picture of her made completely of dried beans. The red rose continues to be her symbol. This candle here is a votive candle that bears her image. Everyone in Mexico claims her as their mother and their advocate.

In January of this year, I was able to go to Mexico City with a group of other Lutheran seminary students. When our small group traveled from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, and prepared to visit La Estacion (that is, The Station--one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city), we were honestly very scared about what we were going to see. Everyone who lives there is what we might call a "squatter." They are not allowed to own the land they live on and could be evicted by the government at any time. Some of them have lived there for decades. As you approach the border of La Estacion, you can see the hundreds of illegal wires tapping into other people's power meters. As you walk along the plywood paths inside the settlement, you can hear the makeshift sewers flowing right under where you are walking. Homes are made from corrugated tin, plywood, fiberboard, scrap metal, whatever people can find, and have hard-packed dirt for floors.

As you go in the main entrance to La Estacion, you see two very different sights facing each other. On the right, you can see the only permanent structure in the neighborhood. It is a small but well-kept stone building that looks like a home. In the States it would be about average size. For Mexico, it's pretty large. There is an iron fence around it and a padlock on the doors. This is the neighborhood chapel. It has room to be a full-fledged parish, and room for several priests to live there, but the Catholic church refuses to make it a parish because that would give the appearance that the church approved of the settlement and the people who live there without owning the land. It's an impressive building, but a very sad building. It has no life in it. Nobody has ever lived there. Nobody can ever go there. It serves no real purpose as a church.

Across the street is a rocky vacant lot with boulders and large stones. The ground is dusty and hard and nothing grows there. On the tallest rock, there is a big statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Small flowers are carefully placed on the rocks before her. This is the center of devotion in La Estacion. Men pause to pray for a few minutes before the statue of Mary in the morning as they leave the settlement to try and find work. Children coming home from school pause in the afternoon. Women come there during the day and leave something small in the hopes that Mary will hear their prayer. A simple sign is posted at the base of the rocks. It says in Spanish: "This is holy ground."

Our group visited two women who live in La Estacion. It's not uncommon for needy Mexican women to develop small businesses on the side in order to make even a little money. One of our hostesses, Andrea, offered to sell us dozens of fresh red roses.

You see, the Morales region, not far from Mexico City, is known for growing most of the world's supply of roses. When you buy roses in February for Valentine's Day, chances are they were imported from Morales. Roses are a common product for Mexican families to sell as they scrape together a living. Our group leader bought a dozen on behalf of the entire group.

We walked slowly out of La Estacion in near-silence after hearing the stories of these women's lives, about what gave them hope and what brought them to despair. One had lived in La Estacion for over forty years. We passed the padlocked church and the dusty holy ground of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The rest of the group had walked ahead of me and only our group leader was behind me. On a whim, I asked him for one of the dozen roses he was carrying. I took the rose and stood for a while at the base of the rocks, pondering where I should put it. Finally I carefully laid it on top of the sign that said, "This is holy ground."

What does it mean that many Mexican families sell this symbol of Mary in order to support themselves? Has this sacred symbol now become worthless except as a commodity? Or do these families see the rose as a gift from Mary to help feed their families? Is this how God is lifting up the little people? Is Mary's song coming true in neighborhoods like La Estacion? How much further is there to go before her song is fulfilled?

Between visiting La Estacion and the Basilica of Guadalupe, our group studied and pondered the words of the Magnificat. We started admitting that we felt guilty and helpless about what we had seen. The thought of Mary singing and magnifying God is a beautiful image we love to think about. But her message to us is a stinging one. Those of us who had seen La Estacion knew that if Mary's song were to be fulfilled, we were the ones who would be brought low. We were the ones who would be going hungry. We were the ones who would be knocked off our thrones.

So where does that leave us? Does the wheel simply revolve, putting us at the bottom of the heap and Andrea and Juan Diego at the top of the heap? Is it all just a huge game of worldly power? Mary says NO. And just as she trusts that she, an unwed pregnant teenager with an unbelievable story, will be lifted up, we trust that Christ's coming brings that justice that the world is not capable of manufacturing. A justice where nobody will have too little or too much, and God will refuse to play the power games of this world. A justice that turns the whole world upside down and into something new. Amen.

November 21, 2004 (Christ the King C)

2006-08-07T02:27:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20 (read responsively)
Luke 23:33-43 (primary text)

Often I go back and read old sermons and cringe a little bit (or a lot) inside. Not this one. To borrow a preaching adage, I had a dog and I walked it proud. Wow!

Click on the time link (and ignore the time it says) to read the sermon.

"Save" is the magic word for a lot of people. Jesus saves. Get saved. Follow these five easy steps and you, too, can be saved. "There are just two kinds of people in the world, the saved and the lost." That's a quote from Jerry Prevo, who also says that "Are you saved?" is "life's most important question". Pray these special words and you will be saved. Ask Jesus the magic question and you'll be saved. Don't forget to click on the link that says, "What to do after you're saved." For a lot of people, getting saved is the whole burrito.

That magic word, "saved," is also like a lightning rod for Christians of all traditions and non-Christians as well. Try typing "get saved" or "Jesus saves" into Google sometime. Actually, that's how I got a lot of these images.

You'll find links like the Anchorage Baptist Temple website that give you step-by-step instructions and an exact prayer to pray in order to "get saved." You'll also find a lot of satire, people using these phrases to make fun of Christianity or certain Christian groups. You'll find jokes, like "Jesus saves...but Gretzky shoots, he scores!" and "Jesus saves, Moses invests." You'll even find joke software that claims to save you by deleting your sin and installing Jesus in your life. Whatever it is, the serious and the satirical swarm around that word "saved" like clouds of mosquitos.

Everyone in Luke's story today seems to be swarming around it as well. The leaders of the people scoff, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The Roman soldiers yell, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" And even one dying alongside Jesus whines, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" In other words, "You say you're buddy-buddy with God, so prove it! Do something useful for a change!" Some of these people are using "save" as a joke to make the point that Jesus is the exact opposite of a king. Others are putting all their trust in that one word, using it to test Jesus and see if he is really the Messiah.

Gradually the logic puzzles in this text begin to emerge. First, note that all of them are challenging Jesus to save himself (although of course the first thief wants him to save all three being crucified). They agree that Jesus saved others. But "saving himself" seem to be the two magic words for them. Now, Luke often uses words that already have a meaning established in the cultures of the Old Testament. In this case, "save" has a very particular history. Throughout Israel's history, God is the only one who can ultimately save. However, God is always the one doing the saving rather than the one being saved. Being saved is a one-way street; Israel and Judah need it and God does it. So you see, it's a little confusing when people tell Jesus to save himself. The second thief crucified with Jesus is the only one who can see that Jesus does save, but the very nature of that saving means that it must be given to others, not to one's self.

Here's another word puzzle for you. In every instance, the word "save" is right next to a title, either "King of the Jews" or "Messiah." For some, these titles are jokes; for others, they are desperate cries for help from the powers that be. Traditionally, both of these titles did not mean "God," they meant a human favored by God. But how does that second thief address Jesus? He uses no title at all. He doesn't ask Jesus to save him. He asks Jesus to remember him. Saving someone means that you rescue them from harm, that you allow them to flourish, that you get them out of a tight spot, that you come along and save the day.

So what does it mean to remember someone? Using Luke's method of drawing words from the Old Testament, we see that God remembers key people at key times in Israel's history. God remembers Noah. God remembers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises made to them. God remembers Rachel, the wife of Jacob. God remembers Hannah, the mother of Samuel. This kind of remembrance is not a detached recollection of someone completely separate. Part of having memories is having emotions. Strong memories can cause you to feel emotion as though they were happening all over again. Sometimes we encase memories in hard little shells when they are too painful, but when those memories escape, they speak to us as though no time had passed. I discovered this last June when a close friend of mine from seminary suddenly died. Sometimes I can almost hear his voice and I know that his memory is speaking to me.

Memories do not simply come and go without creating a bond between the one remembering and the one being remembered. When God remembers someone, a connection is re-made; a new relationship is being created. This is a remembering that makes someone or something present alongside the rememberer.

So when the second man says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," he is giving Jesus the only title he needs: one who remembers. One who reaches out and draws us close. He knows that Jesus is one with the God who remembered the Israelites in the desert, one with the God who remembered Noah and his family in the ark, one with the God who remembers those who cry out for help. This man knows that Jesus is more than an unlucky human being whom God happens to like. And he says, "Jesus, if you're a king, then you're the king of people like me. Don't let me slip away when you become king." Only in Luke do we hear this man's voice. He has been forgotten in every other story of Jesus' death, but here he's remembered. He knows that Jesus is not the king who rides in on a white horse to save the day and bring independence to Israel and Judah; he is God in their midst who draws all to himself.

This full definition of "remember" lives on in the New Testament and in the Christian church today. Jesus' words are alive in the disciples through their memories of him. In Communion, we remember Jesus' life, death and resurrection, and that memory becomes present for us and in us as we gather to share bread and wine. And the beauty of remembering is that it goes in many directions. It's not just something that happens between us and Jesus, and it's not something that only happens backwards in time, like remembering those who have gone before on All Saints Sunday. We are also called to remember each other. This is what our Colossians reading is talking about when it says, "in him all things hold together." Through the memory of Christ, we are made present to each other.

Does this mean that the phrase "Jesus saves" is completely off the mark? No, it doesn't. But it does mean that Jesus saves others by remembering them and drawing them to him. Those who taunted Jesus and told him to save himself didn't understand the connection. For Luke, saving and remembering go hand in hand, connecting different people and creating a new communion with God. The second man understood this.

Surely there have been times in your life when you don't want to or can't be connected to other people, or times when you want to forget someone or forget that something ever happened. Surely you know of people who think that human beings are generally good and decent--until they start getting together. The philosopher who claimed that "Hell is other people" was from France, but he could have been a stereotypical Alaskan individualist trying to escape the oppressive presence of other people.

What does it take to forge us together in a way that overcomes our own weaknesses? The shared trauma of war forges veterans of armed conflict together. Forty years wandering in a desert forged a chosen people from a wandering group of escaped slaves. Shared life experiences, like raising children or buying a home, forge a marriage from two separate lives. Days like September 11th forge a nation as opposing forces mourn together. And yet all of these can dissolve--friends of fifty years can have a bitter argument, Israel and Judah can split and despise each other for centuries, marriages of thirty years can reach the breaking point, and a nation brought together by September 11th can bicker endlessly about what to do on September 12th.

And yet, in Christ, all things hold together. Invisibly. Cosmically. Things hold together. In the memory of Christ, the jagged shards of each person are melted enough to fit together.

Maybe you've heard "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, with the line, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." This poem dates from the years right after World War I. Indeed, things seemed to have fallen apart. During this same time, as leaders like Hitler and Mussolini emerged from the ashes of the first world war, the Pope first named this Sunday "Christ the King" to point to the true center of things, the only one worthy of ultimate trust. No doubt you can remember times in your history when things seemed to be falling apart. And when things seem to be falling apart, all kinds of centers volunteer themselves. Leaders assure us that they will hold things together. Commercials assure us that certain products will help us hold things together. Self-help seminars and life coaches promise us the power to hold things together.

It is a bold statement to say instead, "Things hold together; Christ the center makes it so." But that is the message we are given to proclaim, in our words and in our actions. It is one thing to "get saved," and another to remember Jesus because he first remembered us. It is one thing to follow a King who can get you off the hook, and another thing to know that you are not alone on the hook. It is one thing to follow the guy on the white horse who saves the day and rides off into the sunset, and another to follow someone who saves us by joining in our brokenness and calling us to resurrection.

Have you ever wondered why we don't have a "Jesus saves" sign here at Amazing Grace out on O'Malley? Maybe there's a city ordinance against neon. Or maybe there's a lot of red tape to wade through, so we just never bothered. We have a different kind of "Jesus saves" sign--an simple illuminated cross. No fancy titles. Not only does it remind us that Jesus saves. It also reminds us that we are held together and remembered by Jesus through his life, death and resurrection. Things hold together. We are held together. Christ, the King, the center, can and will hold. Amen.

October 17, 2004 (Reformation 3)

2006-08-04T22:40:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
Psalm 107:1-9
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Luke 13:29-35 (primary text)

We focused on Reformation for the entire month of October, which was great. We used different parts of the ELCA mission statement ("Marked with the cross of Christ forever, we are claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world") each Sunday, and took an ingathering at the end for future church leadership.

You know the drill...click on the time link to read my blathering.

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I am the kind of person who is often accused of gathering too much stuff. I take huge suitcases on trips. I have plenty of clutter and boxes of stuff in storage. It's become a joke to my parents and friends, people who have helped me move all of that stuff many times.

I was a little surprised to look up "gather" and find out just how much gathering goes on in the Bible. The Israelites gather straw, animals, grapes, wheat, and manna, among other things. They are gathered by God, who makes covenants with them, speaks directly to them, and gives them the Torah. Those who heard the words of Jesus usually gathered to hear him speak. The difference between gathering on one's own and being gathered by God is that being gathered made the descendants of Jacob into a single people, into the people of God, shaped into his beloved people by the instruction he gave them. They were more than the sum of their parts, and more than people who simply shared a common interest. They were bound together into something greater than themselves. Likewise, those who came to hear Jesus speak were at first coming to hear a compelling teacher, but could not go away without being influenced by his words and healing.

Why is it important to speak of being gathered and not of gathering of our own accord? Because the idea of choosing to gather with others implies that we have the choice of whether or not to be influenced by others. After all, being gathered into community is only slightly younger than creation itself. Even God could see that it wasn't good for Adam to be alone and gave him a partner. Even the shyest of us were created as communal creatures, as people who are influenced by others and thrive when gathered into healthy communities. The concept of community is woven tightly into the entire Bible. An individual cut off from experiencing deep emotion--positive OR negative--for other people would somehow become less human. Not being influenced by anyone or anything would show a loss of life altogether.

Jesus speaks to the reality of being gathered when in another Gospel he talks about the wheat being gathered along with the weeds, because if the weeds are pulled up when the wheat is young, both will be uprooted together. Gathering is not a simple process, nor is it a smooth one. It is not all roses and sunshine and happy families. Frequently it involves a painful uprooting. It is one thing to speak of what God has created us to long for, fulfilling relationships and cooperation with others. It is another thing to see what really happens in communities, in nations, in congregations, in families, and speak the truth. Nothing is done in isolation from others, and pain always enters the equation at some point and in some degree. Even if we try to opt out of being gathered and withdraw from a community that is wounding us, we are still making decisions based on relationships with others.

Withdrawing from communities that wound us is sometimes necessary. Because no community can be completely shielded from pain, people sometimes do need to leave unhealthy situations for self-preservation. This is a natural reaction, just as turtles, hermit crabs and snails contract into their shells and retreat into safety. Humans react the same way once they have been stung or wounded. Eventually, with time and attention, the wound heals and we can once again take the risk of participating in community.

Some people take a long time to heal. Some withdraw permanently, believing they can only be healthy beings if they maintain absolute individuality. Some refuse to be influenced by others, valuing their own independence above everything. But being gathered into a healthy community does not mean that the community is perfect and without pain. It does mean that people do not stay wounded indefinitely. There is going to be pain, but the church is defined as a place where forgiveness happens in the face of that pain. If you were waiting for the Lutheran moment in this sermon, I'll give you a heads-up. This is it! Luther talked about each of us being both saint and sinner at the same time. A community can also be saint and sinner at the same time, both inflicting pain and seeking to heal that pain. Inconsistent? Perhaps. Reality? Yes.

Jesus' words show us that he sees and understands the possibilities and the realities of being gathered into community. On one hand he cries out that he has longed to gather all the children of Jerusalem, not as wheat into a storehouse, but as chicks under a hen's wings. But only a few sentences earlier he predicts that what God created us for will one day come true; that people will come from every direction to eat at God's table. Notice how the grammatical voice here has shifted so that people are gathering, rather than being gathered. In this future, the difference between gathering and being gathered by God has disappeared, because the will of God and the will of people are no longer opposed. God gathers, but the people want to gather as well. Jesus is all too aware that people in this world often resist being gathered for many reasons. He knows that the time when every last person gathers at God's table without pain is still in the future.

It is easy to see and think of examples of being gathered in the context of this congregation. Think of the feeling you get when we join hands after Communion or for the Lord’s Prayer.
Think of the joys and sorrows of others in this place that you have borne as if they were your own.
Think of someone here you have been angry with, and how that was or was not resolved.
Think of the path by which God gathered you into this place.

This last week, I've been thinking of a story that pushes the boundaries of who is gathered into a congregation. It’s a true story that happened just a few weeks ago to a congregation in Sacramento, California.

Gail was not yet forty years old. She worked part time as an administrative secretary for this congregation. She did not belong to the congregation, but those who knew her loved to talk with her about anything and everything. Some said that she was more authentic than many “proper” church people. She was beloved by her co-workers as a “real person.”

The week before last, Gail called in sick from work each day. She was struggling with severe back pain. The staff—pastor, intern pastor, and other office workers—called her each day that week, asking, pleading and finally begging Gail to let one of them take her to the doctor. Gail said no each time, refusing their help. On Saturday she didn’t answer her phone, but each of the staff left messages offering to help her in any way needed. Perhaps she had gone to the doctor after all, they thought.

But she did not return any of the phone calls, and so on Saturday night the pastor went over to Gail’s apartment and knocked—no, pounded—on the door. He could hear Gail’s dog, barking and barking, inside the apartment, but nobody answered the door. All he could do was call 911. Help arrived, and they found Gail in her bed. Nobody knows quite when she died.

The intern pastor—who shared Gail’s story with me—was sad that Gail had died, but most of all she was angry. Angry that Gail had refused to be cared for by the community around her. Angry that the congregation had chosen not to provide Gail with health insurance because she was a part-time employee. Angry that Gail had not sought medical help. Angry that she had been gathered into a relationship with this woman, which was now filled with pain.

It is not far from her grief and sadness to the lament of Jesus, when he cries out to Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus sees the brokenness of the world, he sees both the joy and the pain that gathering causes, he sees the many children of Jerusalem fighting each other, and he weeps for it. But he does not give up on the children of Jerusalem. He continues to long to gather them together. In the words of the first verse, and also in the words of our psalm today, Jesus longs for a day when we can gather and be gathered at his table, from all directions, and there will be a place for everyone.

Today we are gathered into a community that both hopes and longs for this vision, but at the same time knows the pain that being gathered can cause. The good news is that God's love is greater than us and stronger than our disagreements. It gathers us together and is every day molding us as a church into the image of Christ, to bear each other's burdens and rejoice with each other. Amen.

September 26, 2004 (Pentecost 17C)

2006-08-04T22:25:00.000-04:00

[preached at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Anchorage, AK]
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Psalm 146
Luke 16:19-31 (primary text)

This was my first sermon while on internship. And of course:

my supervisor was out of town and I was doing all three services
the day before we had the first snow of the year, and the power went out while I was writing my sermon
I couldn't get the thing printed out, so I preached from my laptop.

And, check that text out. Just what every intern wants to start out with. Yeesh.

(One note: This congregation would almost always omit one of the readings, so there were usually two readings and a Psalm or poetic prophecy, and they often would go off-lectionary. You'll see what I mean in coming entries if you know what the lectionary readings would have been on a particular Sunday.)

Click the time link to take a look.

When I opened up the Bible and found the text for today, I discovered that it was about just what every new intern wants to preach on: Money and Hell. These are two things that make us very, very uncomfortable.

In our world, money and faith are often considered private matters. Often we are taught to never discuss politics or religion in polite company, and we could easily add to that list the admonition, “Never ask how much somebody earns!” I know I heard that from my mother at some point. So I realize that often it takes a strong rapport between pastor and congregation in order to speak honestly with each other about money and faith—especially the parts of Christian tradition and the Bible that we struggle with.

I'll be honest. I’m not sure if we have that rapport yet. After all, you just met me and I just met you, and we’re still getting to know each other, sort of like a blind date. But I hope that we can struggle with this passage together.

Jesus said to them, "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day." Remind you of anyone? Let me suggest a few images. When I read this, what popped into my mind were the rich and famous who were shown on the Emmy awards the other night, and all the designer outfits and jewelry they wore. Entertainment shows on TV afterwards told everyday consumers how they would soon be able to buy "cheap" copies of the gowns that Sharon Stone and Jennifer Aniston wore. These "cheap" versions would cost only a few hundred dollars instead of thousands of dollars, so that women all over the country can dress like their favorite movie stars. Another example that came to my mind were people whose names are known by everyone for being so rich and smart in business. People like Donald Trump. Bill Gates. Steve Forbes. And you can probably name others.

These are the success stories in our society--people who had an idea and worked shrewdly to build an empire from it. But here's a hint about Jesus' opinion of people who are famous for their riches. Jesus leaves the rich man in this parable nameless AND he makes sure we know the name of the poor man. This is quite a twist for a world that knows who Donald Trump is but doesn't know the name of the man who comes up to you in the Carr's parking lot and asks for bus fare. Also, by leaving the rich man nameless, Jesus leaves the way clear for anybody--including us--to identify with him. This is where the entire parable starts to get really sticky. You have probably heard the statistics about North Americans having more than their share of the world's wealth, that anyone who can eat three meals a day and has their own place to live is already wealthy by world standards. Being new here, I'm just starting to learn about the Permanent Fund Dividend checks being sent out and how important that chunk of change is to the economy and also to life in Alaska. No matter how you slice it, in this parable we are not the ones under the table waiting for crumbs. So, yes. A sticky and uncomfortable parable. I think it shows that money is a lot like heroin. We can't get away from it, and the idea of living without it is frightening and to us, simply impossible.

The strongest reaction we might have from hearing this parable is a sense of guilt for not doing more to reverse this situation. But this leaves us at a loss about how to think about this parable. I think the key to what keeps the rich man in hell can be found by looking at how he acts once he gets there. First off, he cries to Abraham--not God--for mercy, which makes me wonder if he has ever seen God in anything. But more importantly, he asks Abraham to SEND Lazarus. Obviously he is still living in a world in which he had the ways and the means to send for people and have them do errands for him. This parable is not just about money. It is also about power, and the fact that so much of our world is built around the idea that money equals power. This is why our lesson from First Timothy today talks about money being the root of all kinds of evil--because the weeds of power grow out of the root of money.

The rich man just never seems to figure it out. His first request is for Lazarus to come to his hell and ease his suffering. How long do you think a drop of water on a thirsty tongue would really last before another drop is needed? What happens after that drop is gone, is he going to ask Lazarus to come back and give him another drop? Did the rich man even call Lazarus by name when they were alive? Did he ever speak to him at all? Even in the afterlife he talks to Abraham and tells him to "send" Lazarus--he knows his name but even now will not speak directly to him. He can't stop acting as though he still lived in the world and was rich and successful and able to order people around. He knows he is in hell, but it doesn't change him one bit. He is worried about what will happen to his brothers--but only for their own sake, not for the difference they could make in the world. The rich man plays by the rules of the world, the rules that we are all taught to play by. These rules that brought him success in this life are the rules that now create the impassable chasm.

One of the most uncomfortable parts of this parable comes when Abraham says to the rich man that nobody can cross this chasm, that those in hell are abandoned to it. I think many of us know how a “fire and brimstone” approach to serving Christ—that is, do these things or else you will go to hell—has been used (or abused) to scare people into behaving a certain way. This image of a yawning chasm between sinners on one side and saints on the other is the greatest potential for abuse in this text.

But let's look at a few other details. What does it mean that Abraham, who is on the heaven side, was actually very wealthy when he was alive? Apparently the chasm is not as simple as "rich people on the hell side and poor people on the heaven side." Perhaps the chasm between heaven and hell can also be understood as the chasm between the way our world works and the way God’s vision of the world works. It is the chasm between money as intoxicating power (which is what it becomes) and money used for the good of all God’s people (as portrayed in First Timothy). It is the chasm between the way our rules are supposed to insure happiness, and the way God's world works. Perhaps the chasm has not been set up by God in order to keep the rich man out of heaven. Perhaps the chasm has been set up by the rich man in order to keep God out of hell, where he can continue to live by the rules that brought him worldly success.

But joy, not fear, is the operative here, because even though we cannot cross the chasm alone, and not even Abraham, the giant of faith, can cross it, the chasm can be bridged. This is what happened when Jesus was crucified, died and buried. The Apostles’ Creed makes a point of saying that Jesus descended to hell. Jesus descended to where the rich man was! Jesus became part of the rich man’s world and loved it even though it rejected and killed him. Let me suggest a minor revision to the Apostles' Creed. Jesus did not only descend, past tense, long ago, into a place we call hell. Jesus descended and every day descends into the hells of our lives, into the places that hold us fast and separate us from God, and into the hells that are all over our world and communities today, the places that seem to be forsaken by God.

The chasm was also bridged by God in our baptism. The sinner and the saint in each of us are divided by a chasm that runs through the center of our very being, a chasm between what we are and what God has called us to be. Baptism does not erase the chasm, but every day Christ crosses the chasm, descends into our hell, and rises again--and calls us to follow him on this path every day.

Parables like this one operate on a twist. They count on surprising the listener, on causing the audience to stop short and say, "Wait! That's not how the story is supposed to go!" And they confront the listener with a question--usually more than one. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man gives us questions about heaven and hell, questions about how someone who follows Jesus ought to use money, and another very big question, one that really leads us to look at the concrete: How do God's people live in the midst of suffering?

Dan Erlander, a Lutheran pastor and author, suggests a way of life that is consonant with what we hear in First Timothy today. He calls it "manna living." Manna living is living as though everything you receive is like the manna that God gave to the Israelites as they wandered in the desert. If you take more than you need, it becomes rotten. When everyone takes what they need and no more, then everyone can be fed. The division is not as simple as "those who are rich" and "those who are poor". Instead it is between those who live with open hands, and those who live clutching whatever they receive. Christians are challenged to separate money from power. It may sound simple, but money's addictive qualities do not go away simply because the person handling the money follows Christ.

I want to be clear here that while we are called to action on behalf of those who suffer, this action is not a tool to gain resurrection. Only those who realize they are dead can be resurrected. The rich man, although he was dead, still lived according to the rules that had given him success in the world. He saw nothing but death before him, and reacted as though he was still the person he was when he was alive. We could say that Lazarus, with the dogs licking his sores, was dead before he even died. He knew that the ways of the world lead to death. Likewise, if we cling to the rules the world teaches us, we will always be searching for a way out of death. We can only act once we know we are dead and are being resurrected, here and now. Sometimes it is not an easy thing to learn. May God guide us in our learning, in our dying, in our rising and in our living. Amen.

Preachermonkey!

2006-07-29T02:01:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the long hiatus. It won't be fully resolved for a bit yet, because it's Friday...and Sunday's coming. And now I preach on Every. Single. Sunday.

I sort of got distracted from posting my past sermons by interviews, then ordination, then moving across the country, and then getting settled in a new city with two new congregations. But I know right where to pick up posting, and I hope to do so soon.

So...keep cool and the cabin will be back up to snuff soon, I hope!

July 18, 2004 (Pentecost 7C)

2006-03-13T23:23:00.000-05:00

[preached at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Everett, WA]
Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42 (primary text)

One of the most emotional sermons for me to preach. Click the time link below to read it.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

When I was studying in Berkeley, California this last year, I lived in a house on the same lot with two other houses owned by the seminary. One of my neighbors decided to start holding Taize-style services in his living room every Tuesday evening. Taize is the name of a monastic community in France where many people make pilgrimages every year. At Taize, worship consists of simple chant in dozens of languages, Scripture readings, and silence. Tuesday nights became my time during the week to meditate and have conversations with God. So many times I would share with God all the stressful things going on, the papers I hadn’t finished or the books I hadn’t read. And nearly every time, a voice in my head spoke, saying, “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

Frequently when I read this text, I find myself sympathizing with Martha. In my most painfully honest moments, I can imagine a smug Mary smirking at Jesus’ feet, knowing that she made the right choice over her older sister. Let’s just say that old habits between siblings die hard. Scholars disagree about what Jesus’ statement was intended to do; some envision Jesus shouting above the racket of Martha’s chores to get her attention. Others claim that Jesus repeated Martha’s name in order to chastise her. But I see a Martha who can’t sit still, trying to decide which chore to tackle first, tossing an apology to Jesus about how Mary never pulls her weight around the house. I see Jesus gently putting a hand on Martha’s arm, forcing her to stop what she is doing, and speaking words that cause her to take a deep breath and forget everything except the remarkable man in front of her.

We seem to have a lot standing in the way of making the choice that Mary did. We live with information overload, from hundreds of TV channels, to thousands of newspapers and magazines, to the unbridled information of the Internet. We live in a society where work is the measure of worth; the busier you are, the more important you must be. We have inherited a legacy of “Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” and “God helps those who help themselves.” Increased media presence means we are constantly confronted with causes we should care about. While we are called to care for people in need, without a central focus, we become torn and unable to give ourselves to care for others. There are indeed many things for us to be worried and distracted by. In our world, even the quest to sit quietly at Jesus’ feet and listen often falls prey to the urge to make the most of our time. Penciling “spiritual enlightenment” into our schedules will not make it happen any easier. Forcing communion with God into a tiny box on our schedule only means we have reduced it to something else to worry about. Being present with Jesus becomes one of the many things that we struggle to make time for.

But, a devil’s advocate might ask, if we don’t try to spend time with God, how will we ever manage to do it? And I think I’d reply, good point. We won’t ever manage to do it. But the question is phrased in the reverse of the way it ought to be. Taking time out of our schedules for church or meditation or prayer is not really a matter of tracking God down and re-introducing ourselves. After a break from church, it might feel like we are getting re-acquainted with Jesus, but I think that is a potentially misleading way to put it. It seems that so often the time that we take to “find” Jesus becomes the time when we realize that he never left our side.

It becomes the time when Jesus touches our arm and stops us from preparing a banquet for him, because we suddenly realize that his words are food that will never pass away or leave us hungry again. Without that food, the banquet we prepare is only a shadow of what God wills for all people. Our own efforts at caring for others are important because they physically share that Word of God with others in a way they can smell, feel, and taste.

It is easy to hear this text and remind ourselves that we must seek a life of balance, a life where work and meditation are parts of one harmonious whole. After all, if we can accomplish this, then we can make ourselves complete and fill in our own missing gaps. We can fill ourselves with spirituality and healing and faith, and at the same time bring home the bacon, clean the house, and contribute to our communities. But if this is the message we take out of this text, then we are neatly sidestepping Jesus himself. Jesus does not tell us to be both Martha and Mary. Neither does he discourage Martha from her gift of hospitality. Instead, Jesus reminds Martha of her anchor, the one thing she was created to be—a child of God.

Remember also that Jesus does not try to make Martha into Mary or Mary into Martha. In John’s gospel, the two play distinct roles; Martha looks Jesus in the eye and boldly says that he is the Son of God, while Mary kneels again at Jesus’ feet and anoints him with expensive oil. Each of these actions is equally a confession of faith. Neither one tries to do everything. Instead, both follow Jesus in ways that do not contradict their own special gifts. Likewise, we cannot be all things to all people, but we can live our own lives to the glory of God. We are called to discern what God has created us to be—individually and communally—and then to reflect on how to live in a way that witnesses to that creative power of God.

The good news in this text is the message that only one thing is required, and it is not something we can earn or deserve. It really is good news that we cannot fill ourselves up with the one thing that we need. Jesus’ words to Martha and to us are not only comforting, but also pleading and urging. They are the words of someone who is filled with sadness that so many things come between us and God. They are the words of a Savior who wants desperately for us to hear the Word of God and be filled by it, sustained by it. Perhaps Mary was not the smug sister who gained approval from Jesus. Instead she could not resist the Word of Life that was before her. She had found the pearl of great price, the reign of God, for which she would give up everything.

Instead of balancing our own act, Jesus here expects us to be unbalanced, with no choice but to be oriented to the life-giving Word of God. He calls us to realize that the many worries and distractions are only illusions compared to the deep reality of God present. As the church father Augustine once wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This is why our inability to make ourselves complete is good news; it confirms that we are children of God, created by God and for God. As we were made in God’s image, so we are made to reflect God’s person in word and action. Think of each person as a mirror, with flaws and imperfections, yet positioned to reflect God. What are we if we have nothing to reflect?

When Jesus says directly to Martha that his presence will not be taken away, he is telling her and us that he will always be in front of the mirror, enabling us to reflect him to others. Even when the distractions of today pass like shadows and our efforts to fill ourselves up prove empty, God’s promise to abide with us in Jesus remains. May it always be so, now and forever. Amen.

May 30, 2004 (Pentecost Day C)

2006-03-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

[preached at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Everett, WA]
Acts 2:1-21 (primary text)
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b NRSV
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17

I still can't believe they let me preach on a major festival! Click the time link below for more.

At seminary, you get lots of practice in trusting the Holy Spirit, whether you want to or not. Just the decision to go at first means that you have to trust that God really does want you to leave your life, your job, your family, your home behind. Going to seminary is not just like getting any other degree. It’s about trusting the Spirit to transform you into someone that can lead God’s people. My most difficult challenge at seminary was to realize that no matter how late I stay up studying, how many papers I write, how much I try to do the right thing, all my efforts by themselves are not enough to make me into the right leader.

As I and my fellow students were placed in internship sites this spring, the guidance of the Holy Spirit became even more necessary. After all, students choose which seminary to attend, which classes to take, and how they will conduct their academic lives. Not all of us were lucky enough to choose where to go on internship. It was daunting to think that filling out and reading applications would be enough to choose the right site. Some people felt the need to circumvent the system entirely and arrange their own internship. A friend of mine recently visited her internship site and the town where she would be living for the next year, and instead of being excited, she was disappointed. This is when it’s hard to trust that the Spirit really is at work.

Trusting the Holy Spirit can be even more difficult when you graduate from seminary. The ELCA has this large assignment process, and it isn’t always clear why people are sent to certain places. Students requested specific regions and then found out that they were assigned somewhere completely different, somewhere they specifically did NOT want to go. This is when it’s really, really hard to trust that the Spirit is at work--when life seems to be sending you somewhere completely opposite to where you want to go. This isn’t limited to pastors, however. Maybe you’ve experienced this in your own life. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out if the Spirit is sending you somewhere or calling you to something, or if something else is at work--someone or something higher up in the system, your boss, your manager, the economy, the government, your family, your own shortcomings. Sometimes we try to separate the Spirit from the ordinary people that influence our lives, so that when we get conflicting messages about where to go and what to do, we can sort out which are from God and which are not.

This might lead us to ask a basic question: So, just who is the Spirit anyway? In our gospel lesson today, Jesus has a few things to say about that. He uses the Greek word “parakletos”, which has a lot of different translations. Comforter. Helper. Counselor. Advocate. Exhorter. We cannot understand who the Spirit is without understanding what the Spirit does. This is not a Spirit that drains us dry or demands what we cannot give. This is not a Spirit that lets us remain in the safety and comfort we have created for ourselves. This is a Spirit that will be our companion, and will also work on our behalf. This is a Spirit called alongside us to help. This is a Spirit that does not just swirl aimlessly around us, but abides with us and in us.

This is a Spirit that gives us words to speak, words that turn the world upside down. It calls us to do the impossible and gives us the strength from God to do it. In the story of Pentecost, Peter quotes the prophet Joel, proclaiming that God will pour the Spirit upon all flesh. Those considered least qualified in the community--the children, the teenagers, the elderly, those who are not free--will be those who speak the word of God to the people. The separations of language and culture will be overcome by the Spirit working through not only the words, but also the ears of each person.

I love hearing the long list of nations and languages. It reminds me a little bit of the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. Nations you didn’t even know existed, and nations who will probably never receive a medal, for one brief moment, they are all equal and united together as fellow members of humanity, even if they can’t understand each other.

Some of you probably know that I spent two weeks in Mexico City this winter as part of a required cross-cultural experience. The group of seminary students from across the ELCA learned some important things about language. My hypothesis is that language is built in layers in our brains. The first layer is the one that determines most how you interact with others. For most of us, that first layer was English, and for some like me, it was a very thick layer. The layers of language below this first layer are the different languages you have learned in your life. Usually in order to get to the next layer down, you have to go through the layers in sequence. For example, my second layer was Japanese, the language I learned in high school. For the first few days, I would find myself wanting to speak Japanese in Mexico. It took nearly the full two weeks before I had a Spanish layer operating above the Japanese layer.

While I still was nowhere near being fluent in Spanish, by the end of the trip, even those who were at the same level as me were able to understand a great deal of Spanish without translation. We attended a church service that was completely in Spanish and were all able to pay attention and follow basically what was going on. We visited people in their homes--people who could not afford to purchase the land they lived on or build sturdy homes that weren’t made of scrap metal--and although we always had a translator close at hand, the real communication came through their faces, the looks on their faces as they talked about their family or their garden, when they talked about the policies of intimidation that kept them chained to lives on the margins for decades, when they talked about the violence in their struggle for survival. These places that would normally seem God-forsaken to us suddenly had beauty and dignity, revealed through a language deeper than the spoken word.

This is a Spirit that cannot be shown to us as a single entity. Just as Jesus explains to Philip that God the Father cannot be seen apart from what has already been shown in Christ, the Spirit is seen and known only because it abides with us and with the entire people of God. The Spirit teaches us and reminds us of Jesus’ message of radical love because it dwells within us, around us, and beside us.

Pentecost, our festival of the Holy Spirit, is for the Jewish people a remembrance of God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses. They remember how God gave the law as a guide and an advocate to Israel, and established a relationship between God and the people. For us as Christians, at Pentecost the Holy Spirit writes a new law on our hearts and makes our bodies into living temples of God. The grace of God that dwells with humanity consecrates our lives and makes them holy, transforms our everyday interactions into places where the Spirit can shine forth.

Luther wrote in his Small Catechism that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies us and our efforts to live as God intended. On our own we cannot begin to succeed, but with the Holy Spirit abiding within us as a community, we can hope that God will work through us to be the presence of Christ in the world today. This is a world that Jesus says cannot receive the Spirit, because it neither sees nor knows it. Our calling as a community of faith is to recognize it dwelling within us, and to follow its guidance even when it turns the world upside down.

When you think about the vast diversity among the human race, sometimes it’s pretty mind-boggling that we are called and gathered by the Spirit to be one. Think of your worst enemy. Think of people who have done something terrible, something unforgiveable. Think of people you would rather not even touch. Think of people you fear, or people you are disgusted by. Think of people you can’t even begin to understand. Think of people you have a hard time respecting. Think of people who can’t seem to listen to you. Now think about this: the world we live in seeks to separate us from each other. The world is unable to see or know the Spirit’s work to make speaking and listening really possible between people. This is the radical love Jesus talked about, love that turns the world upside down. This is what the Spirit of truth is about.

I think we would be missing something if we thought that the church as a whole is always about the work of the Spirit. Let’s be honest. Sometimes it isn’t. Even though the Spirit abides in us and with us, we are still part of the world that is beloved by God, yet remains blind. We still struggle to see where the Spirit is leading us and receive its guidance. It’s difficult to remain in fellowship when our convictions and opinions seem opposed. It isn’t always pleasant to be taught or reminded that we are called to walk in the ways of peace.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Jesus’ words of farewell here are both comforting and disturbing at the same time. If the peace of God is not the peace of the world, we ask uneasily, then how can we attain it? That’s exactly the point. We can’t. Peace according to God is not the absence of conflict, or the relieved feeling of security. God’s peace is not about cease-fires or treaties or alliances. If we live in peace, but others do not, then it is not the peace of God. We genuinely want the world to have peace. Our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers have given their lives for peace. But the peace of God requires something more.

While we were in Mexico, we watched a movie entitled “Romero,” about the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Perhaps some of you have seen the movie as well. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend it. Archbishop Romero was assassinated during the civil war in El Salvador because the Spirit led him to seek the peace of God for all of his people, not just for the wealthy or the privileged. He had this to say about peace:

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

The world gives peace that can be erased in the push of a button. But the peace of God, which is the fruit of the Spirit, abides with us. My time worshipping with Anglicans at my first theological school taught me a wonderful doxology that I still repeat to myself every now and then: “Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” That power is the Spirit, working to gather us and lead us in ways that do not depend on our own motivation, ways that defy the ways of the world.

When we share the peace in worship services, we are sharing a sign of the peace of God that is breaking into the world as we know it. We share a sign of the peace that brings us together in opposition to the forces that work to keep us apart. We share a sign of the peace that we are called to extend to all. We share a sign of the peace that would be impossible without the Spirit working within us and through us. We share a sign of peace that goes beyond safety and security, and a sign of the Spirit that sometimes guides us into uncomfortable or dangerous places. And when we do so, we remember the words of Jesus: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Simple words for complicated problems. Perhaps they are just simple enough.

Because we are not sharing in Communion this Sunday, passing the peace is not part of this worship service. But it seems fitting to do so on this festival of the Holy Spirit. And so I invite you right now to rise and share the peace of God with each other.
The peace of God be always with you.
Let us share that peace with one another.

July 20, 2003 (Pentecost 6B)

2006-03-13T23:07:00.000-05:00

[preached at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Everett, WA]
Amos 7:7-15 (primary text)
Psalm 85:8-13
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Another attempt at preaching on the first reading! This one went a bit better (I think) than the one in February of the same year. But my memory could be sketchy; I am posting these three years after they were preached. Click the time link below to read the whole sermon.

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Traditionally the preacher preaches on the Gospel text. But this evening, we’re going to look at a few things about our reading from the book of Amos, a prophet who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel before it fell to the Assyrians. Since the Bible texts were actually shortened on Sunday to accommodate a longer service, I’m going to read the Amos text in full for us now.

A reading from the book of Amos, chapter seven, verses one through fifteen.
Amos 7:1 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king's mowings).
2 When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, "O Lord GOD, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!"
3 The LORD relented concerning this; "It shall not be," said the LORD.
4 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: the Lord GOD was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.
5 Then I said, "O Lord GOD, cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!"
6 The LORD relented concerning this; "This also shall not be," said the Lord GOD.
7 This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
8 And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by;
9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."
10 Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.
11 For thus Amos has said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.'"
12 And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there;
13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom."
14 Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees,
15 and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.'

Here ends the reading.

“The land is not able to bear all his words.” We’re not talking about long-winded authors or preachers here (at least I hope not). We’re not talking about textbooks or speeches that seem to go on forever. We’re not even talking about the billions of words you can find on the Internet today. We are talking about words from the mouth of Amos, words that are few but heavy, words that cause the nation of Israel to strain under their weight.

The words of Amos that we are probably most familiar with are these from chapter 5: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” But they are preceded by heavy, heavy words: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies...Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.” And they are followed by more harsh words in chapter 6: “Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.” God gave Amos an incredibly difficult message to bear to Israel, a message that pointed out and rejected their hypocrisy and pleaded with Israel to be right with God, inside and out, to worship fully and live lives of mercy towards the poor and the oppressed.

The first two visions Amos relates here in chapter 7 are harsh and heavy; they show a God who has abandoned his people and consumed their sin with disasters that consume their lives as well. But in both of these visions God turns away from utter destruction. God refuses to wipe the slate clean, because it would wipe out his people. God will not lay a burden on us that is too heavy for us to bear.

So instead, God shows up in Amos’ third vision, standing by a wall, with a plumb line in his hand. Now, a plumb line is a kind of level; it’s a length of string with a weight tied to the bottom of it. Because gravity pulls it straight down, you can use it to align vertical edges of a house’s walls, for example, to make sure they are straight. They are still in use today--you can find instructions on the Internet for how to make one. So why does God need a plumb line? The point of this vision is that God places a plumb line among the people--a standard, something that can be used to measure us, something that does not change with popular opinion any more than gravity or level-ness changes. Think about when you hang a picture, and you eyeball it to make it as straight and level as possible. When you actually find the level and use it to check the picture, how often have you actually succeeded in making it perfectly level using only your eyes and your sense of balance? This plumb line was a standard that could not be applied to others without applying it to ourselves.

So God places this plumb line among his people, for them to measure themselves against and take account of their actions. Instead of destroying evil and the people together, because they are completely intertwined, God sets forth a standard that can reveal this to Israel. And God makes a very careful and serious promise here as well. “I will never again pass them by.” God will not overlook our needs, or ignore us. But God will not let us blunder aimlessly without giving us a model, without setting an example of what he expects of us. God will not destroy us in order to cleanse us--think of the promise made to Noah after the flood--but our own ignorance of the plumb line has the power to destroy us. With the plumb line, God is putting his cards on the table and challenging us to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

For the Jewish people, the plumb line set down by God was the Torah, the law of Moses, which was both a gift of God and a requirement for life. For observant Jews, every facet of their lives is determined by what is recorded in the Hebrew Bible. For us as Christians, we see through a different lens, and we have a different plumb line set by God. For us, that plumb line is Christ. The words and teachings of Christ, the example set by Christ, and the meal that is Christ. Jesus Christ--his life, his death, his resurrection--these are all proof that God has not passed us by. The very presence of the plumb line indicates God’s grace, that he will not let us flounder about without reaching out to us, trying to teach us what it means to be God’s children, trying to show us what will bring life by becoming human like us.

Amaziah knew--or thought he knew--that the land, the nation of Israel, the king’s government, could not bear all these words. His primary concerns were stability and security, a comfortable pace of life where things did not change much. The locusts, the fire, and the plumb line meant little to him--instead he accused Amos of treason and being unpatriotic, unable to see beyond Amos’ ominous words of destruction. He probably thought he was being merciful by shooing Amos and his troublesome words off to Judah, to go stir up trouble there. After all, he could have killed Amos for predicting the king’s assassination. And something about the location of these predictions was especially suspicious; Amos had dared to say such things right on the king’s doorstep--at Bethel, the king’s sanctuary, where professionally trained prophets predicted long life for the king and prosperity for the nation of Israel. Look, says Amaziah, this isn’t what people pay you to do. Nobody wants to hear such depressing and disturbing predictions, and they’re not true, anyway. Go do your prophet thing somewhere else.

And Amos replies, Look, I don’t do this for a living. I do this because God has given me a message that I can’t keep silent about. I’m an average guy, I do regular things. I have a normal job herding goats and trimming trees, I don’t work for the government. I’m not anybody special. I didn’t go to college to be a prophet. I didn’t come from God. God made me do and say these things because you need to hear. Then Amos says, you don’t want me to prophesy against the government, fine--God has words for you, too. And he breaks loose on Amaziah with harsh predictions about his wife, his sons and daughters, his land, and his very life.

Who are we in this story? When I first read it, I identified with the role of the prophet Amos--one who says, I am just a normal person who is learning how to do an abnormal job, thanks to a decision by God. Perhaps all of us today can identify with Amos, knowing what it is like to be Christian in a society that loves spirituality but disdains commitment.

But perhaps we can also see ourselves in the role of the people, who suddenly see a prophet in their midst and judge for themselves whether he or she is valid. How often do we simply screen out those who speak prophetically, those who call us to respond to injustice around us? Those who call us to see the plumb line? Don’t get me wrong, I have ignored my share of petitioners, signature gatherers, protesters, and sidewalk prophets. I’m sure you have too. It’s a sort of defense mechanism that allows us to stay focused on our own lives, on what we have to do that day, with a minimum of guilt. It allows us to sustain our belief system, our mode of operation, without challenges or threats. We carry on with our own business, everyone else carries on with theirs, and those who try to prod us out of complacency are the weirdoes. What’s unsettling in this situation is not that we disagree with those who disturb us, but that we can ignore them to the point where their existence has no influence on our own. We are effectively erasing people by not allowing them to bother us. Just like Herod in our Gospel lesson, we, too, kill our prophets. We kill those who disagree with us by using the terribly underrated weapon of apathy. Why? Because living with those who critique us and our way of life is simply too painful.

The land is not able to bear all his words. The people are not able to bear all his words. We are not able to bear all his words. But the miracle, the grace in this bleak picture, is the plumb line that God has extended to us, the example of Christ to whom every nobody was a somebody, and every person who had been erased was restored. This plumb line, this new standard for us, did not remain immovable and remote to preserve itself. It gave its very life so that it might become one of us. And thus, the standard that is impossible to achieve is suddenly something we are able to bear, something we are strengthened to bear. And God will never again pass us by.

And now may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, to life everlasting. Amen.

March 30, 2003 (Lent 4B)

2006-02-28T23:56:00.000-05:00

[preached at First Lutheran Church, Vancouver, BC]
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21 (primary text)

Since I didn't like what I preached on March 28th, I ditched it and wrote this from scratch. Click the time link below to read the sermon.

When I first got a Palm Pilot, I spent days going through every possible feature, setting every setting, customizing everything to my own personal life. I put in every single class, assignment, meeting, birthday, anniversary, holiday, every conceivable thing I might ever want to remember found its way into this little tiny device. When I was setting the location, which in turn sets the format of dates and times, I realized that by moving from Seattle to Vancouver, when the longest day of the year came, I had gained a whopping fifteen minutes of extra daylight. Fifteen minutes! Can you believe it! Drive two hours north and you get an extra fifteen minutes on June 21st! I know this might seem silly to those of you who have lived in northern Canada, where you get hours of extra daylight on June 21st, but bear with me here. I was so excited; I didn’t have any games on the Palm Pilot yet, so for fun I’d pretend I was in different cities around the world and see how much extra time I got.

Of course, eventually I settled down and left the Palm Pilot set to Vancouver. Eventually I also realized that I would lose fifteen minutes on December 21st. The gift of extra light wasn’t a gift at all; it was simply an exchange that would even itself out in the end. Now, as we approach the fullness of Lent--after all, Lent means “lengthening”, which is what the days are doing now--it can be so pleasing and hopeful to have more daylight that we don’t think about the corresponding shorter days of the fall, the darker times that are ahead. The longest day is yet to come, the sun has yet to shine in all its glory, the brightest light is not yet here.

There’s an important thing to know about John’s Gospel, and that’s the language he used, the specific key words. We encounter lots of polar opposites, lots of words that are set against each other. Either you are in, or out. Either you are good, or evil. Either you are white, or black. Either you are right, or wrong. Either you are with us, or you are against us. You get the picture. It can be confusing sometimes, because John uses all these opposites, but that’s not what it’s really about. Yes, John does use “light” and “darkness” as opposites, but look at the other words. Instead of setting “evil” against “good”, he sets “evil” against “truth”. And “world”--what is “world” set up against?

It is worth taking some time to think about what we mean when we are talking about light. We are not talking about white instead of black, right instead of wrong, good instead of evil. We are talking about realization, sight, knowing. We are talking about reality, about the way things really are, about true identities. What was the first thing God created? Light. Where was God before creation? In the dark.

It is worth taking some time to think about what we mean when we are talking about darkness. We are not talking about a substance, an evil entity that seeks to bring death and destruction. We are talking about the absence of light, the absence of revelation, the absence of knowing the truth. People--including us--do not love darkness because it is evil, but because it prevents knowledge of evil. We do not love one half of the whole; we love what keeps us from seeing the whole. We say we want to know the truth, but in the words of Jack Nicholson, we can’t handle the truth. Too much light, and we are blinded. Too much dark, and we are also blinded.

Even though we will get fifteen more minutes of light here in Vancouver, the darkness still abounds. Evil cannot be confined to one arena; it spreads through personal and public space, through hearts and minds and mouths, through hands and feet and eyes, through pocketbooks and cell phones and magazines and picket signs and gas pumps, through high-rise offices and suburban houses and tiny straw huts, through Ottawa and Washington D.C. and Baghdad and Pyongyang. Sometimes we can point outside us to evil and sometimes it is present in our closest relationships. Even when we think the light is finally here, evil whitewashes itself and struts proudly at full noon. We grab huge buckets of black and white paint and throw them desperately at those we think should be in the light. Because we are in darkness, we can’t see what is true, and because we can’t do what is true, we can’t come to the light.

Receiving and basking in the light is much more difficult than trying to give the light--or the darkness, for that matter--to someone else. Notice how even in verse 18 of our lesson, when those who believe are not condemned but those who do not believe are condemned, the condemnation doesn’t come from those who believe, it doesn’t come from Jesus, and it doesn’t even come from God. It simply is. Is this a matter of heaven and hell? Or maybe, is this a matter of knowing and not knowing? Of not being able to see God’s truth?

Maybe we can find a clue about light and darkness by looking before this passage, by reading the story of Nicodemus and how he came to Jesus and asked how one could be born from above. He came to Jesus at night--alone--in the darkness--and he could not see the truth of what Jesus was telling him. Nicodemus--a Pharisee, an enlightened member of society--was intrigued by Jesus’ message, but was enmeshed in darkness. But as the gospel of John unfolds, we see a miraculous change in Nicodemus. When the Jewish leaders seek to give Jesus an unfair trial, Nicodemus tries to stand up to them. After the crucifixion, Nicodemus helps take Jesus’ body from the cross and bury it. Although he was in darkness, he continued to follow the spark of light which in the end could not be overcome. In the next chapter, we find the story of the Samaritan woman, who in the eyes of her society was a true creature of the night, yet she came to Jesus at full noon, and understood the truth about him almost immediately.

Can you see the successful CEO, with the beautiful wife and the Granville Island condo and the two perfect kids and the Mercedes, slipping out of his crisp clean sheets one night and dressing in a hurry, dashing down the mirrored hall, creeping out to see this strange man called Jesus? Can you see Jesus asking the prostitute from the downtown Eastside for a drink in the middle of a hot August day, and can you see her saying to her friends at lunch that day, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did?” Can you see the fences and boundaries of the world being crossed freely and being redefined when the light falls on them?

We can become so absorbed in the language of light and darkness, of belief and judgment, of evil and truth, that we forget to look forward to the end of the story, the end that we know is coming at the end of Lent. The cruel end of judgment and condemnation and rejection and betrayal. Even though Jesus knows Judas will betray him, he still washes his feet and called him his own, and blesses those who remain in darkness. After darkness has covered the land on Friday, we sit in the darkness of the tomb, but when the stone finally groans and rolls an inch to the side, light spills through the crack, and suddenly we have a difficult choice to make. Do we dare show people how wounded we are, show the truth about ourselves in order to see the truth about God?

In being “lifted up”, the boundaries we draw for blessing or condemnation are often wrenched from our hands and put to God’s purposes. Being lifted up on the cross was the ultimate sign of Jesus’ condemnation. Gazing with horror on that instrument of capital punishment put you in the line of fire; put you in danger of being the next one up there. Yet condemnation here is twisted into exaltation; Jesus’ being lifted up is in the end not degradation, but his glorification. Lifting up a man on a cross has been twisted into lifting a beloved Son into his Father’s embrace.

For God loved the world like this. That sacrifice is being twisted into abundance, that darkness is being twisted into light, that death is being twisted into life, and that the world--------the world, too, is being twisted into life.

And now may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and our minds through Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.

March 28, 2003 (Lent 4B)

2006-02-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

[preached in my preaching class at the Vancouver School of Theology]
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21 (primary text)

I wrote this at the last minute...I wasn't especially proud of it then, nor am I now, but you can click the time link below to read it.

I’m sure you all know John 3:16, from signs at football games and street corners. So let’s repeat it all together, just to make sure we all have it down cold.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Okay, now on to John 3:17! Let’s hear it!

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world in order to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Hello, what’s wrong, don’t you know this one?

It’s a sad fact that in our culture, people often know John 3:16 (or at least its beginning), but never know John 3:17. Maybe it’s that looming C-word-- “condemn.” We like the picture of the bearded Father in heaven with the whole world in his hands, dandling the earth like a child on his knee, cradling it tenderly and loving it dearly. We like the image of the loving Father, it either reminds us of our own fathers or what we hoped for in a father. Unfortunately, the love of John 3:16 is not a mooshy love, not the fulfillment of our hopes and dreams. It is a love of pain, of seeing your beloved enter a realm of rejection and embarassment, a love that dares to go beyond our wildest dreams and radically change what it means to be the world.

The world for John is not the blue and white sphere of fragility and beauty that we think of post-space race. It is not the creation. It is not God’s body. It is a place of disbelief, a place where lightness and darkness are not clearly distinguished, a place of rejection, a place of struggle and challenge. It is a place where Jesus is destined to find only rejection and bitterness and death.

But it is a place that God loves. How does God love it? God loved the world like this. That God came and dwelt among the world, and loved it to the end, and by dwelling in it sought to save it from itself. God loved it not to condemnation or judgment, but took the unwalked path and loved it through to eternal life, overturning what it thought was truth. The world’s false truth was its condemnation, but the condemnation came not through another but through itself.

The judgment came through the darkness of the world; those who did evil sought the darkness. But evil seems to have no regard for darkness today. Evil can flaunt itself, disguised as truth, on the city streets, in the public squares, in the corporate headquarters, in the words of our CEOs and Presidents and Prime Ministers, in the actions of our neighbors and enemies and friends, in the gestures of our pocketbooks and vehicles, in the advertisements of our magazines, in the mouths of our parishioners and colleagues. Evil is not always exposed. Evil does not always seek darkness. Evil whitewashes itself to deceive a black and white world. Evil knows that we--the world--will mistake it for truth.

Evil does not know that even the polarized language of John is about to be overturned in the person of Christ. Evil does not know that even a small glimmer of light that cannot be overcome is enough to cross the boundaries and see the truth struggling to take shape. Even those who are of the world, those who reject and seek to destroy, do not yet know that their rejection only strengthens the glimmer of light. Jesus’ choice of Judas appears to destroy him. Like the snake in the wilderness, he is lifted up on the cross to be broken and left for dead.

But the world does not yet know that what was meant to snuff out the light only turns up the intensity, putting a spotlight on the cross, putting a spotlight at the tomb on Easter, putting a spotlight on the one who seemed to be overcome. Suddenly the identity of Christ could be no clearer. Lifting up a man on a cross has been twisted into lifting a beloved Son into his Father’s embrace.

And as love has been twisted into sacrifice, death will be twisted into life, darkness will be twisted into light, and the world, the world too will be twisted into life, not by mere belief but by being illuminated. For this is how God loved the world, that life was sought and achieved for all. Amen.

March 25, 2003 (Annunciation B)

2006-02-28T03:21:00.000-05:00

[preached at Lutheran/Anglican morning worship at the Vancouver School of Theology]
I don't recall all the texts we used that day, but I believe they included:
Isaiah 7:10-14
Luke 1:26-38 (primary text)

Follow the time link below for the full sermon.

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

[at this point I unbuttoned the pleats on the side of my alb (white robe).]

I want to show you something. When my aunt made this alb for me, I asked her to include some sort of hidden pleats on the side. Not in case I gained weight--let’s not even go there--but since this was a garment I’d be wearing for long into the foreseeable future, I wanted the pleats there to give extra room in case I happened to be pregnant in the future.

That being said, I am fully aware that if I were to suddenly be pregnant now, and never married, my chances at being ordained and called to serve a congregation would be completely zapped. While pregnancy and motherhood and fatherhood and new life and families are so often wonderful blessings, sometimes they are the end of dreams, the slamming of doors, the disappearance of opportunities. Sometimes they are the advent of fear, of shame, of despair.

Sometimes I wonder along with Mary--troubled, disturbed, perplexed, pondering Mary--just what sort of greeting the angel brought her. Greetings, favored one? What kind of favor is this? I’m engaged but not married, physically but not emotionally mature, and now this? Gee, thanks. Thanks for giving me a bad reputation and a child everyone will whisper about, and I’m just supposed to believe that he’ll overthrow the Romans and restore the golden age of David? Whoa! Look, Gabriel, I don’t know what you mean by this, but no thanks, I’ll take my chances with Joseph. He’s a nice enough man, and I know he’ll take care of me and our children. Sure, some virgin out there has to bear the Son of God, but it doesn’t really have to be me, does it?

Mary’s story bears a strong resemblance to the joyful stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, where childless women pray and pray to God and are blessed with a special child. Just as in creation, the Holy Spirit broods over Mary, leaving new life in its wake. Just as in Sarah’s story, an angel asks, “Is anything impossible with God?” Just as in Hannah’s story, Mary identifies herself as a “servant of the Lord”, and sing a song of praise after annunciation. Unlikely births to unlikely mothers are the threads stitching together the Hebrew Bible. There is one vital difference. Mary did not ask for any such thing to happen. God’s action has gone above and beyond any dream of man or woman. Unlike her relative Elizabeth, whose story we hear intertwined with Mary’s before and after this passage, Mary’s annunciation comes suddenly, unrequested, unanticipated, and without warning. One might even say that before Mary hears the rest of Gabriel’s story, her annunciation is even unwelcome.

Note how the details from Gabriel don’t cause Mary to leap for joy. But they do bring her to a crucial point in the story; her agreement with God’s plan. Her response is to help participate in that plan and bear and raise the Word of God, so that he will do the things Gabriel has foretold. It is an answer born of compulsion but not of force, and not of degradation but of acceptance. Acceptance of her role in God’s plan, acceptance that she is the person being called into covenant with God, acceptance of her rights and responsibilities in that covenant. She responds with a word that echoes throughout the centuries, through Israel’s history, and through to our time.

Hinneni. Here am I. The words of Samuel, the words of Isaiah, the words of Abraham. The words of those who know they cannot fulfill God’s expectations, yet they can do nothing else but try. For this we have come into the world.

Hinneni. Here am I. The words of those whose mouths are touched with fire, whose lives are living sacrifices, whose bodies are temples for God. The words of those who anoint kings and raise up messiahs. The words of those of unclean lips, the words of virgins, the words of childless mothers, the words of wondering prophets. Who will go for us?

Hinneni. Here am I. The words of those who hear a faint call. The words of those who give up former lives to live lives for other people. The words of those who have felt the rush of the Holy Spirit, the breath of life. Words I will bear with me every time I wear this sign of baptism [here I displayed the words of Isaiah printed on the inner hem of my alb] since Isaiah’s response to the call is inscribed here. The words of the church as it seeks to discern Christ’s voice among the tumultuous din of sound bytes, advertisements, bombs, factories, technology--the voices of the world. Speak, for your servant is listening.

One may question the irony of why such a joyous occasion as Annunciation is always located in Lent. Perhaps it is so we may return to our vows as Christians, seeking to hear the voice of God and answer it with “Here I am.” Or perhaps it foreshadows the cross, the broken body, the wounds, the Pieta--the grieving mother with her fallen son. We rejoice in the incarnation of our Lord, only to know that his state execution is looming on the horizon.

But we give thanks to God that there is more beyond the horizon, beyond that curve of earth that encompasses all we can see, there is a new life, there is resurrection, there is a table where all are fed, there is a basileia where the voice of God rings loud and true in our ears. Until then, may God give us strength to continue seeking the voice and following it, and when we are face to face with annunciation, may we follow the “roads of light and storm”, as Denise Levertov puts it. Let us not turn away from them “in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.” Let us, in spite of what the world will think, say with a mixture of apprehension and surrender, Hinneni. Here I am. Here we are. Let it be with us according to your Word. Amen.

February 23, 2003 (Epiphany 7B)

2006-02-27T19:43:00.000-05:00

[Preached at First Lutheran Church, Vancouver, BC]
Isaiah 43:18-25 (primary text)
Psalm 41
2 Corinthians 1:18-22
Mark 2:1-12

Click the time link below for the full sermon. (It was a poem-like experiment!)

Forget what happened before, don’t dwell on it.
Surprise! Watch! I am doing something new, don’t you see it emerging?
I will make a path out of your desolation and water in your desert.
Creation will honor me, jackals and ostriches,
because out of disorder I give life, water out of dryness,
to refresh my people, the people I created to celebrate what I do.
Yet you ignored me, you saw no point in following my ways!
You starved our relationship, you forgot who I was,
I didn’t ask anything impossible of you.
You couldn’t even be bothered with remembering me.
Instead you heaped your problems on me, your sins put you into debt.
But I am the one who will forget all these things because of who I am.
I will wipe away what is in the past and stay with you forever.

Forget what happened before, don’t dwell on it.
“do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old”--
does God really mean it?
does God really mean, “forget that my Spirit brooded over the waters of creation”?
“Forget my rainbow in the sky after I dried the earth”?
“forget my covenant that came to Abraham and Sarah through strangers”?
“forget how I led you out of Egypt through towering walls of water”?
“forget the anointing of the shepherd’s son David to rule my people”?
“forget the prophets who opened their mouths for my Word to come out of”?
“forget my promises to you”?
“forget what I have done to make you my people”?
“forget who you are”?
Can we really forget? Completely, utterly, forget without hesitation?
Forget on purpose? Make ourselves forget? Is it okay to forget?
Not forgetting the grocery list or the thank you card or the council meeting,
but forgetting things that define who we are.
Forgetting the Apostle’s Creed or the Words of Institution,
forgetting that Luther preached faith, not works,
forgetting where we were born, or who our parents were,
forgetting that we are baptized, forgetting we are fed at the table,
forgetting the times God whispers softly in our ear,
or forgetting that we as a people have experienced loss and grief.
How can God want us to forget these things that shape us, form us, make us who we are?

If our very being bears witness to these things and remembers them,
but we refuse to move forward,
how can we see the new things that are in front of us?
If we cling to promises that have failed us,
promised happiness, a promised job, promised health, promised recognition, promised love,
if our hearts are filled with anger or tears, we cannot see what God does quietly in a corner.
If we frantically try to regain something, or fulfill what was expected of us,
we cannot become what we are meant to be in the days to come.
If we are enslaved to self-reliance and self-sufficiency,
if we rely on power and force and glory to bring results,
we cannot anticipate God’s future, or see it already springing up around us.

Surprise! Watch! I am doing something new, don’t you see it emerging?
The Hebrew word used here means “Behold, me!”
Surprise! Look out! Pay attention! Check it out!
Lift up your head, lift up your heart, wipe your eyes and SEE!
I am overflowing with excitement about what I’m doing for you right now!
Can’t you see it springing up like a seed sprouting in your gravel path?
Behold, I do a new thing!
I plant a new life, I sing a new song, I knit a new people!
I whisper a new word, I push forth a new breath, I leap with a new dance!
I light a new flame, I touch a new heart, I bear a new child!
Because of promises kept, and in spite of promises unkept,
You can lift your eyes and see this new thing I am doing in your presence.

I will make a path out of your desolation and water in your desert.
Paths are made for walking, and so we can only walk through desolation,
God will not lift us out of it or away from it.
Because we are in it, we can see the new thing that springs forth,
the road that emerges from the wilderness,
the water that springs up from the barren and dusty rock,
that surprises us when we behold it.
The sandstorms and the thick dust of the past will not blind us forever.

Once I traveled to a salty desert, thick with blinding, stinging white salt instead of sand.
No trees. No plants. No shrubs. No buildings. No rocks. No people.
Truly desolate.
Yet the intense quiet was overpowering,
You could do nothing but remove your shoes and socks
and walk reverently in the salty roughness,
listening for a voice,
and finally hearing the wind racing over the crystals,
which all sang with remembered vibrations
and picked up and stung whatever happened to be standing there.
Filled with voices and singing the air whipped by,
signs of life in a corner of death.

Creation will honor me, jackals and ostriches,
because out of disorder I give life, water out of dryness,
to refresh my people, the people I created to celebrate what I do.
Jackals, dragons, dodos, ostriches,
camels, horses, fish, orangutans,
bacteria, starlings, cockroaches, parrots,
scorpions, sea horses, geoducks, turtles,
everything that relies on water out of dusty earth,
everything that relies on life out of dust that enfolds us and dust that we become in death,
everything that springs forth out of earthen vessels,
everything that leapt into being when God breathed,
all these and more honor the one who gives life at the right time,
the one who calls attention to the new thing now in progress.
A new creation is now arising out of the dust of the desert.
God molds a new people out of what had surrounded us and blinded us.

Yet you ignored me, you saw no point in following my ways!
You starved our relationship, you forgot who I was,
I didn’t ask anything impossible of you.
You couldn’t even be bothered with remembering me.
We are not used to burnt offerings and sheep and sacrificing animals,
but for Israel they were a way of feeding the entire nation in God’s name,
and nurturing their relationship with God.
How can we behold the new thing God does
if we do not answer the invitation to come and see?
How can we see the path God raises up
if we refuse to look down and blink to clear our eyes?

Instead you heaped your problems on me, your sins put you into debt.
When God is ready to leap for joy because of the new thing that is beginning,
we insist on living in a world that is passing away,
we cling to a past that we are enslaved to.
With a burned offering our sins would rise up like smoke,
be borne away by the wind and forgotten.
But instead these sins, this way of being,
hangs heavy around our shoulders.
Death, holocaust, separation, carelessness for life,
the sins of ourselves, our mothers and fathers, our ancestors, our nation, our society,
taste bitter in our mouths and follow us wherever we go.

But I am the one who will forget all these things because of who I am.
We all know the phrase, “forgive and forget.”
The two do not always go together.
We know God forgives, we hear it week after week, Sunday after Sunday,
but to think of God forgetting is both frightening and freeing.
We were created, knit, and gathered as God’s people,
but even God is willing to forget this
because the new thing that springs forth is more powerful,
more freeing, more intoxicating,
more sweeping, more embracing
than anything ever done before.
Why do we cling to forgotten promises?
Why do we walk in the ways of our ancestors
even if their paths go nowhere?
When we struggle through the desert,
what do we do if we can’t see the water that springs up from the rock?
Even if we cannot see it, it will still be there,
even if we cannot set aside our old patterns of behavior,
God will forget for us, and in time give us new life.

I will wipe away what is in the past and stay with you forever.
Our pasts give us strength, they form us, they identify us,
but even more strongly, we are identified as people of God.
Churchgoers or not, believers or not, cradle Lutherans or not, seekers or not,
questioning, doubting, turning away, returning,
looking for hope, for comfort, for inspiration, for healing,
stronger than family, nationality, ethnicity, category, occupation,
God is forming us anew into a people of praise,
a people of need, a people of joy, a people of sadness,
a people of anticipation, a people of wholeness,
a new thing.
Can you not see it among us already?

November 24, 2002 (Christ the King A)

2006-02-26T02:51:00.000-05:00

[Preached at First Lutheran Church, Vancouver, BC]
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95:1-7a
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46 (primary text)

Click the time link below to see the full sermon.

Think for a minute about the phrase, “a calculated risk.” What comes to mind? Doing your research before buying shares of Bombardier on the Toronto Stock Exchange, or Lucent Technologies on Wall Street? Considering the likelihood of success before undergoing an experimental surgery? Doing the numbers on mortgages and loans before buying a new home? Taking out a loan to send your son or daughter, or yourself, for that matter, to an expensive private school that will hopefully lead to success?

Think for a minute about calculated risk. A friend of mine was driving to school one day and was stopped at a stoplight when she noticed a middle-aged woman walking unsteadily across the street. While she was watching the woman carefully, the women suddenly looked her in the eyes and mouthed, HELP ME. My friend rolled down her window and asked the woman what the problem was, the woman said, “I’m lost and I don’t know where to go. I’m new to the city and I can’t find my way home.” Images and warnings flashed through my friend’s mind--should she pick up a total stranger who definitely looked unstable? The woman’s breath smelled like alcohol--was she safe? What would happen if she did not unlock her door?

We value safety and security so much that any risk we take is usually carefully weighed. We are taught to consider each option and choose the one that yields the most good--for our families, neighborhoods and communities, but more often, for ourselves. When we calculate the benefits, we are usually figuring out how we can end up with more than we started with. Growth, progress, improvement, getting ahead--these are important to us and to our society. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” of course. But in practice the venture should be well-planned, well-considered and well-constructed. How risky do we really get? And what gives us the courage to take risks?

The goats in today’s gospel had all the risks figured out. They knew Jesus was the Messiah, they knew he would come to reign again, they knew how important it was to acknowledge and honor him as king. They had calculated the benefits of being a Christian and decided it was worthwhile. Go to church for a few hours a week, listen to the sermon, give a few dollars here and there, do a few hours of volunteer work, go to the Bible study, take the kids to Sunday School, and of course, when Jesus came again, fall on your knees and worship him as the King over all. And in the end, you got eternal life. What a deal!

The sheep, on the other hand, were a little slow--just like sheep in real life. They didn’t have a confession of faith or a Sunday routine. They didn’t have a plan for earning eternal life. They didn’t have a two-stage Christology or a three-stage Christology or any Christology at all. The Greek word for “nations” here specifically means Gentiles, so they were not Jewish, and possibly not Christian at all. All they did was share their limited food, water, clothing, shelter, and time with those who were in need. They hadn’t taken any time to calculate the risk, to do the math, to figure out if they could afford to help people like this. They didn’t have a “personal relationship” with Jesus--they didn’t even recognize Jesus when he was right in front of them.

No wonder, then that both groups are shocked when they receive the unexpected. The sheep saw more than they realized, while the goats saw less. Calculating the risk of helping others did not account for this hidden presence of Jesus. In fact, calculating this risk kept some from seeing Jesus. Obviously some don’t know Jesus as well as they thought they did. Jesus can’t be predicted; we don’t know in advance where he will make himself known to us. Without taking an UNcalculated risk, we risk missing Jesus altogether.

So is it possible to resist our human and rational longing to carefully compare pros and cons before making a decision? Are we called then to be impetuous and not think things through? What if we need some time alone, some quiet time to think and make what seems to be the best choice? Is this a bad thing?

Our logic is a gift from God and should not be neglected. But at the same time, if our logic allows us to explain away our call to serve, it keeps us from seeing the true need of the world. This is the danger of living in a world where there is no end to the poor, the suffering, those in need. There are always more to help, and so we can take our time, think it over; if we miss a few, we know there’ll be others. Do you give your toonie to the shivering kid whose styrofoam cup is half empty this morning? Or do you say to yourself, “After I get my morning latte, I’ll give the change to the next kid.” We use our reason to temper our risks, to make them easier to handle and less likely to really affect us.

When a call went out for volunteers to offer beds and shelter to travelers stranded in Vancouver after September 11th, I seriously thought about calling. I live close to the airport, I have a fold-out couch, I am American...in short, it seemed like a perfect way to help out. But I am also a single, young woman who would feel very vulnerable with a complete stranger sleeping in my living room. The sad realities of our world, the structure of sin we live within, makes it difficult for us to take chances like this. If I had volunteered anyway, would you have congratulated me? Or would you have raised your eyebrows and thought, “How lucky you are that you happened to get a good, decent person. Who knows what could have happened? How brave!” The risk, once it was calculated, proved too great.

Does it remind you of disciples who fled the trial of Jesus? Does it remind you of Peter denying Jesus? Does it remind you of others who know the risk to themselves is too great? Does it remind you of yourself? As Jesus’ words die away, we are pointed towards the shadow of the cross and the earthen lump that is Golgotha. Soon Jesus will be arrested, tried, and crucified, and his face will truly be one that needs food, drink, clothing, and companionship. But not one stays with him, because the risk is too great.

How can we undertake the risk even if it is too great? Can we have the grace necessary for good works and not be conscious of it? Can we resist explaining risk away, but not be foolhardy? We are called to live in-between knowing the possible outcomes and blind obedience. We are between the poles of world-wise maturity and non-calculating innocence, and we must learn to live within that tension, neither cynical...nor naive.

It is a risk to follow a king who cannot promise safety or security to his followers. It is a risk to follow someone with no resume, no money, no troops, no friends in high places. It is a risk to follow a shepherd instead of an earthly king. Christ separates the sheep and goats before the final sundown as one who loves and gives, not only as one who judges. The Reign of Christ invigorates us because the sun has not yet set, and even now, we can see its seeds among us. Present and future pull on us strongly like the poles of knowing and innocence, and we live somewhere in the middle, trusting that God will guide us each step of the way.

HELP ME, the lost woman said again. My friend took a deep breath and unlocked the door, and told the woman to get in. The woman knew her address but had gotten confused and scared, and could not find her way home after wandering a few kilometers away. As the car pulled up to the woman’s home, she turned to my friend, looked directly into her eyes again, and said, “You are truly an angel sent from God.” Before my friend could reply, the woman was out of the car and heading up towards her front door.

Who could have calculated that risk?

Give us courage, O God, to take even the uncalculated risks and not turn away from your Son in the face of the needy. Help us to not confuse seeing with serving. Amen.

June 17, 2001 (Pentecost 2C)

2006-02-24T21:49:00.000-05:00

[Preached at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Everett, WA]
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15 (primary text)
Psalm 32
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3

I think I figured out a solution. Click the time link below to see the complete sermon. (it's an early one...I'm not entirely proud of it, heh.)

David didn't know it, but that afternoon when he climbed the steps to his palace roof for some fresh air after the scorching mid-day desert heat, he was about to trigger an avalanche. When he saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing in the distance, he succumbed to curiosity and asked someone to find out who she was. Why do we get the idea that her identity did not really matter to David? Her husband, after all, was one of David's loyal soldiers, but that did not stop him. Immediately he sent his messengers to retrieve her and gave in to his temptation.

When Bathsheba told David that she was with child, David was concerned for her reputation, but he was also concerned about covering his tracks and concealing what he had done. Right away he sent for Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, and cordially offered him a few days off so he could go home and be with his wife, which would explain her condition. Uriah, being an honorable soldier, refused this luxury because his fellow soldiers could not have the same pleasure. Since David's first attempt to cover his sin failed, he then plied Uriah with rich food and wine and made him drunk. But this didn't work either; Uriah just fell asleep without returning to his home and wife.

David was at the end of his rope. He had tried to cover his sin with minor deceptions and had failed. In his mind, he had to take drastic measures: he sent a message to his top general, Joab, and specifically asked him to place Uriah in the front where the bloodiest fighting would be. He even asked Joab to command the other soldiers to abandon Uriah on the battlefield, to draw back from him so he would be killed by the opposing army. And the ultimate irony was this: David had Uriah carry this message to Joab. Uriah delivered his own death sentence, and as far as David was concerned, Uriah had given him no choice. David had tried to fix things so that no one would be hurt and no one would be the wiser--no one would find out about his sin with Bathsheba. But when this didn't work, David needed a fast and permanent solution to his problem--one where direct blame could not be traced back to him.

At first, his solution seemed to work perfectly. Uriah died as expected at the hands of the enemy, Bathsheba mourned him, and then David promptly married her. Bathsheba eventually gave birth to a son. As far as David was concerned, all had ended well. But by progressing from sin to sin to sin, David unleashed an avalanche of sin, leading to injury and death just as an avalanche of snow would. David coveted his neighbor's wife, committed adultery and murder, abused the power given to him by God, and became insensitive to the pain he had caused and blind to his wrongdoing. Far from being a leader and protector of his people, he had resorted to using them to cover his mistakes, even to the point of killing them. It took a visit from the neighborhood prophet, Nathan, and a confrontational story before David could see the greed and callousness behind his actions. Fortunately, David's faith in God and willingness to listen to Nathan helped him realize what he had done and ask for forgiveness.

After the incident had passed, David expressed his guilt, shame and repentance by writing Psalm 51, the same Psalm we repeat every Ash Wednesday, the same Psalm that is sometimes part of our liturgy, the words that ask God to create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit in us, to keep us in his presence and give us his Holy Spirit, to restore us with the hope of salvation and uphold us with the Spirit. David knew he had lost many of these things in the avalanche of sin unleashed with Bathsheba and pleaded with God to have mercy.

As a sequel to Psalm 51, David then wrote Psalm 32, our psalm for today. In this psalm David expresses the sheer joy of forgiveness and the rock-solid security of God for those who come to him with their confessions. When David writes, "While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer," we can almost feel the burden of his shame and guilt, weighing on his shoulders like a heavy load on a hot and dry day. Even after being stricken with the realization of what he had done, David's faith in the Lord led him to confess and enabled him to experience the wonder and joy of God's forgiveness--God's willingness to wipe the slate clean. The gods of other nations cannot match God in both his justice and mercy. "Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord."

Now, the unnamed woman in our Gospel lesson would surely agree with David's words. She didn't need a Nathan to come to her and point our her sin; she knew that her profession placed her on one of the lowest rungs of society's ladder. And when she was compelled to be in the presence of Jesus, her sin rested heavy on her shoulders just as it did on David's. But her repentance, too great for words, was to humbly minister to Jesus' feet. Feet in Biblical times were usually dusty, dirty and in need of cleansing. By bathing and anointing his feet, this woman demonstrated her wordless faith and love for Jesus and enabled her to experience a cleansing of her own. Her actions also showed repentance and sorrow for the life she had led, and it is this repentance that made her redemption so sweet and her joy in forgiveness so pure. Just as in David's story, it is necessary to experience the bitterness of knowing our sin before we can fully experience the blessing of forgiveness. Without knowing how much we have been forgiven, we cannot love God as fully as we should. (5:30)

When we participate in confession in our worship, we also journey through the bitterness towards reconciliation with God. The first part of our confession is repentance, where we admit to God that we have sinned in thought, word and deed, just as David did in Psalm 51. We are faced with our shortcomings and mistakes and humbled by the fact that we can never get rid of sin on our own. Even though we are the ones who actually repent, we do so because the Holy Spirit gives us the faith we need and compels us onward.

But confession would not be complete without absolution, in which God forgives us and welcomes us back into his family. It's as though sin has hit a couple of grand slam home runs and we keep striking out, and in the middle of the game, God simply wipes all hits, runs and errors off the scoreboard, giving us a fresh start as though the sins had never existed. In absolution God makes us righteous--that is, we are "put right" with God, and can dine at his table and share our lives with him. David's joy in Psalm 32 reflects the spirit of absolution. God had not ignored or covered up David's many sins. He had wiped them away.

Because the Holy Spirit plants the seeds of faith in us, we can truly believe that God loves us and forgives us, giving us peace instead of heaping sin on our conscience like a heavy burden in the middle of the desert. As Jesus said to the nameless woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." Her faith allowed her to experience forgiveness. Faith also motivates us to make confession in the first place, and without the true realization of our sin beforehand, the absolution is empty. And faith also equips us to hear confession and forgive others. It strengthens us to support others who may come to us with an unexpected situation or a problem, because absolution can flow through us to others in everyday life, not just on Sundays.

David--the most praised king of Israel--and the unnamed woman--one of the lowest of the low in Gospel times--and all of us in between experience repentance and absolution in different ways. For David both came through a confrontation with the prophet Nathan. The woman entered our Gospel lesson repenting through her humble actions and received loving absolution from Jesus. And every Sunday we repeat sobering words of repentance and reassuring words of absolution to experience forgiveness. We can also search for other ways, perhaps less word-focused and more action-focused, to repent and be absolved on the other six days of the week, and when God calls us to help others experience his forgiveness, we can answer. The king is not simply lowered by repentance, and the prostitute is not simply uplifted with absolution. We are all brought low together and then elevated as one.

public service announcement

2006-02-24T03:23:00.000-05:00

Just so you all know, I've been working on getting expandable posts to work so I can keep the amount of text at least somewhat eye-friendly when I begin to post sermons. So far I can get them to work, but they are showing up on ALL posts instead of just the ones I want to be expandable. (See the "Read more" link? It shows up even when there is no more to be read.)

Blogger's help seems to be of two minds on this topic, so at the moment I'm leaning towards creating some other links to sermons from posts, if that makes sense. Hopefully you'll see me filling in the backlog shortly.

test post

2006-02-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

This is a test of the expandable post system. Did it work?

Welcome to theolog cabin!

2006-01-31T20:50:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, I'm semfem, and welcome to theolog cabin. Theolog cabin is a place where, poetically speaking, you can come to read deep thoughts and ponder the meaning of life. Prosaically speaking, it's a place where I will be posting my sermons and any other theological thoughts I want to share. I still have a lot to figure out about using Blogger, and more specifically about posting loooong posts like sermons, so thanks for your patience in advance.

You'll notice that I will post the date and place of each sermon in addition to the text. Each sermon is different depending on when and where it is preached, and the energy of the congregation has a great deal to do with its delivery. The congregation is the place where most of this theology has been done, and so the content is always in some part a group product, not my own doing. And so, I try to give credit to the communities that have made my own theological formation possible.

You'll also notice that I have disabled comments on this blog. To some degree this is because I am still searching for my most authentic theological voice and would like to concentrate on that in this blog. But mostly, I know that I would want to respond to each and every person with a well-considered, thoughtful and sensitive response, and there is no way I can commit to that! So...sorry for now folks, but no comments.

I think that's all I have to share right now. Prepare for the backlog of sermons to come. :)